Honda CEO orders Prius beating hybrid

I always root for any company taking on Toyota's supremacy, be it Honda, GM, Nissan... whoever! We all benefit if they are ultimately successful, that's what progress is all about. For the time being, the Prius is the most mature and effective example of hybrid technology and the rest are playing catchup! Honda tried a very conservative approach with the Insight II and came up short. Now they have to reboot and it may take at least two or three years before we see the result. GM is trying a more extreme technology that results in a very costly vehicle, so I have doubts the Volt will be a serious challenge to Toyota. The Leaf looks and sounds good, but infrastructure to support an EV will hurt Nissan for awhile. I think this decade will still be dominated by Toyota and the Prius.

 

Heh. They had one, at least from an mpg perspective, the 1st gen Insight.

Unfortunately, I doubt it being a strange looking 2 seater w/3 cylinder engine helped much, yielding poor sales.

 

Very few of that generation were actually produced. With an all-aluminum frame & body, it was doomed from the start, far too expensive to ever become profitable. There were sold at a big loss for the learning benefit they'd provide.

What did they learn? To me, it seemed pretty clear that assist technology is too limited to compete with full hybrids.
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Well yea, but that's to be expected if you make anything in low volume ... and they never DID intend on the car being as popular as it is/was. What was it ... maybe only 3 or 4 states that they ever sold them in? Heck, if they'd have made more, & sold them in more states, I'll bet the'd of sold a whole bunch more.

 

A friend of mine's wife had one of the 1st gen Insights. He called it a "1 and 1/2 seater" !!

 

I had one of those cars too. I bought it in 2002 and I loved that car! And yes the mileage was very good, I was usually getting in the upper 60's with it. Unfortunately, some old lady in her Lincoln town car demolished it. No dealers in the area were able to get any more Insights at the time, so I bought a 2003 Prius instead.

Now I have a 2010 Insight and love it.

 

My friend's wife loved her Insight, too. She had it in the NC mountains in Boone, NC and got terrific mileage going up and down the mountain roads. I remember her saying back then that she was getting 50 to 60 mpg, which was unheard of at the time. I will have to check and see if she still has the car. The last time we talked about a year ago she was still driving the car.