The Honda Insight

The Honda Insight, which was introduced in early 2000 in the United States, is designed to get the best possible mileage. The Insight is no longer part of Honda's line, but it's still a good example of how a hybrid car can work.

Honda used every trick in the book to make the car as efficient as it can be. The Insight is a small, lightweight two-seater with a tiny, high-efficiency gas engine. The Insight has the best EPA mileage ratings of any hybrid car on the market.

The Honda Insight is a simplified parallel hybrid. It has an electric motor coupled to the engine at the spot where the flywheel usually goes. Honda calls this system "Integrated Motor Assist." The Insight has either a conventional, five-speed manual transmission or an automatic CVT (continuously variable transmission).

The electric motor on the Insight helps in several ways. It can:

• Assist the gasoline engine, providing extra power while the car is accelerating or climbing a hill
• Provide some regenerative braking to capture energy during braking
• Start the engine, eliminating the need for a starter

However, the motor cannot power the car by itself; the gas engine must be running for the car to move.

To get the best mileage possible, Honda used all of the efficiency tricks discussed previously. But the Insight relies mainly on three areas:

• It reduces the weight - Already a small car, the Insight uses a lightweight aluminum body and structure to further reduce weight. By making the car lightweight, Honda is able to use a smaller, lighter engine that can still maintain the performance level we have come to expect from our cars. The Insight weighs less than 1,900 pounds (862 kg), which is 500 pounds (227 kg) less than the lightest Honda Civic.

• It uses a small, efficient engine - The engine in the Insight, shown below, weighs only 124 pounds (56 kg) and is a tiny, 1.0-liter, three-cylinder that produces 67 horsepower at 5,700 rpm. It incorporates Honda's VTEC system and uses lean burn technology to maximize efficiency. The Insight achieves an EPA mileage rating of 60 mpg/city and 66 mpg/highway. Also, with the additional power provided by the small electric motor, this system is able to accelerate the Insight from 0 to 60 mph in about 11 seconds.

  Insight engine

  With the electric motor running, the Insight produces 73 horsepower at 5,700 rpm. If you compare that to the engine horsepower alone, it looks like the electric motor only adds 6 horsepower. But the real effectiveness of the electric motor occurs at lower engine speeds. The electric motor on the Insight is rated at 10 kilowatts (about 13 horsepower) at 3,000 rpm.

  It's the peak torque numbers that really tell the story. Without the electric motor, the Insight makes its peak torque of 66 pound-feet at 4,800 rpm. With the electric motor, it makes 79 pound-feet at 1,500 rpm. So the motor adds a lot of torque to the low end of the speed range, where the engine is weaker. This is a nice compromise that allows Honda to give a very small engine the feel of a much larger one.

• It uses advanced aerodynamics - The Honda Insight is designed using the classical teardrop shape: The back of the car is narrower than the front. (Note that real teardrops do not behave this way aerodynamically -- click here for an interesting article on the aerodynamics of falling water droplets.) The rear wheels are partially covered by bodywork to provide a smoother shape, and some parts of the underside of the car are enclosed with plastic panels. These tricks result in a drag coefficient of 0.25, which makes it one of the most aerodynamic cars on the market.

The Insight is actually not very different from a conventional car once you get behind the wheel. When you accelerate, the gas engine does most of the work. If you accelerate quickly, the electric motor kicks in to provide a little extra power.

When you are cruising along the freeway, the gas engine is doing all of the work. When you slow down by hitting the brakes or letting off the gas, the electric motor kicks in to generate a little electricity to charge the batteries. You never have to plug the Insight into an electrical outlet; the motor generates all of the power needed to charge the battery.

One interesting thing to note is that in the Insight, the manual transmission is separated from the engine and motor by the clutch. This means that if you are the type of driver who likes to put the clutch in or put the car in neutral when you slow down to a stop, you are not going to get any regenerative braking. In order to recover energy when you slow down, the car has to be in gear.

Now let's take a look at the technology of the Toyota Prius. The Prius works in a very different way from the Insight.