That's good, a lot of people will likely want a smaller car than a Prius and why shouldn't they get great mileage too?

Two features now incorporated in the EPA's driving cycle results, which lower the estimates.

Really, the EPA should not combine these two in the same projected 'city' mileage number, because the conditions will not occur at the same time. They should report a break-out of all five tests separately. Then you'd see what effect cold-weather driving has on the car, and what effect air-con has on the car.

The numbers are really only useful for comparing two cars against each other, not your own results against the EPA's.

That's right Mike, it was only ever intended as a comparison tool.

If the lead foots at C&D can still get 46, that pretty much means lighter lead feet will do better. Good deal.

Oye... and as usual, the headlines is where the first attempt to exaggerate and mislead is made.
The rest of the mistakes are well within the capacity of mainstream automotive media to repeat. Sure, Jeremy Clark is far worse but at least he tries to be entertaining - in a sick kind of way.

Cheers;

MSantos

Prius killer my butt.

If that 98 HP total is any indication, the Insight will be doing 0 to 60 mph in 14 seconds.

Word is the Civic hybrid is over 13 sec from 0 to 60. That's awful. I would hate driving like that.

Edmunds.com Inside Line has already done a full instrumented test of the 2010 Honda Insight along with the '09 Fit Sport and '09 Civic Hybrid:
------------------------------------- 0-60 (s)
2010 Honda Insight --------------- 10.9
2009 Honda Fit Sport ------------- 11.0
2009 Honda Civic Hybrid --------- 13.5

The Insight has lower gearing than the Civic Hybrid which helps explain a faster 0-60 but lower EPA mileage.

True.

The trouble is you then get people - particularly journalists - calling the EPA 'leadfoots' (or, before the new tests, 'lightfoots' as it was harder to get the old EPA numbers), or in Europe particularly, attacking the hybrid car (generally)/Prius (specifically) for not achieving the 'official' numbers. In the worst case, it's accused of 'greenwashing'.

It's really, really hard to design a repeatable, representative test. Car and Driver magazine should shut up about fuel economy results they may have achieved, because the 128 mile test trip - if it's performed on ordinary roads - just isn't repeatable. So many confounding factors haven't been removed - wind speed, direction, air temperature, humidity, surface water, oil, stop light timings, and that's before we get to the big one of traffic. Without controlling all those factors, you cannot compare two vehicles. The EPA test may be flawed, and not necessarily representative of one driver's experience, but it does show the relative potential of two vehicles precisely because the conditions are so closely controlled.

Just like others before, the Edmunds tests do not reflect the actual numbers accurately either.

When testing IMA vehicles, their tests should account for the SoC and they often do not. So far only Car and Driver and a few others have done so and what is observable is that in the case the HCH-II, it will have a 12.1 sec from 0-60 with a OK-good SoC. If the SoC is lacking as it often does after they beat the life out of it in their "testing" then you'll be lucky to score a 13.5 seconds and many times you score well into the 15 seconds or more.

Yes, the gearing on the HCH-2 is taller than that of the new Insight. How else would you be able to get 70-90 MPG at 60 MPH on the highway? The new Insight will likely not be able to do that.

Cheers;

MSantos

They did 0-60 in 10.6 seconds, noting it was behind the 10.1 seconds they got in their previous Prius. They mention that the (probably manual) Fit did it in 8.5 seconds.

Curb weight is only 2727 lbs. BTW.

Personally, I don't like comparing 0-60 times much because you can't easily get the times w/the equipment typically at drag strip and it's too short, leaving for too much variation.

For the 1/4 mile, it was 18.0 seconds @ 79 mph. That's pretty slow but typical of weak econoboxes. (For comparison, I achieved ~14.5 @ 97 mph in my Z. I hope I have trap speed right.) 1/4 mile times already have a lot of room for variation.

At that price they are not going to be killing many Prius sales. At $18k its a Prius killer.

will it kill the Pri?? who knows besides time. bigger question, who cares?

brand name loyalty is still stronger, way stronger than a few mpg's. lets face it, no one made a purchase decision based on that. now make it 7+ mpg or more, then maybe or make it $5,000 or more price difference and you have something to talk about.

fact is, we dont have enough high mileage vehicles on the road and we do have a lot of drivers that want one. so the more the merrier.

The price difference between a non-hybrid Civic and Accord is more than $3k. That's how much a mid-size car cost more over a compact car. Why wouldn't that also apply to the Prius and the Insight?

Regarding the "killer" moniker, just chalk it up to news media coming up w/headlines to get eyeballs and sell advertising.

An example is that the news media dubbed the Microsoft Portable Media Center as an "iPod killer" because it played video (I totally scoffed at this). Not that it was the first portable device to play video files either.

The (5th gen) iPod video didn't exist at the time the PMC was introduced.

Well, look where the PMC is now. It was killed in ~2006 and I don't personally know of anyone who ever bought one.

If there's anything I could say about Car and Driver's fuel economy figures, it is that you will probably not do worse. In the case of the Prius, it's true. I generally don't do as bad as the 41 mpg they got on their first test of the 2nd gen Prius.

I remember looking at these figures on a couple of cars a long time ago. Both got 25 mpg in their hands. But tell me which you'd rather have been seen driving, a Yugo, or a Honda Prelude Si?

I hope they don't name it car of the year, you know what happens to lots of Car of the years? They turn out to be crap.
I hope the Insight is a success, I hope it brings more drivers into hybrid cars.

Me too. I like Hondas. Our Prius was my first Toyota, and it was a hard transition for me, mentally. I just didn't think of myself as a Toyota person. I had a vague notion that all Toyotas were boring cars driven by grandmas. It wasn't rational, but that's what happens with brand loyalty.

I was won over by the gas mileage and excellent engineering of the Prius. Now I am firmly in the Toyota camp. My brand loyalty has been altered by this experience.

Tom

I tell you what Tom, when I no longer own a Toyota but I own another brand of car, I'll move to Michigan. I can tell you now, it will be a cold day in hell before I do that.
The buffer I use is not buying another brand of car.