Recently Honda revealed the new concept car to hold the previously
retired "Insight" badge at the Paris Auto Show.
True its name heritage, the new Insight will be a fuel sipping
gas-electric hybrid. The concept car Insight is a four door sedan that
looks a great deal like the current Toyota Prius hybrid. In fact nearly
all styling and design decisions appear to be based on a thinly veiled
copy of the aging Prius version 2.0, albeit with a number of "gee whiz"
techno ad-ons in the form of LED lighting and body trim highlights.
As far as efficiency goes, the initial specs fall short of the Toyota
older brother and are only a pale nod toward the stellar MPG of the
original Insight. To its credit, the new Insight is set to exceed the
original two-seater Insight in both practicality and performance.
Although the specifics of the final production model have yet to be
firmed up, the Isight version 2 appears to be a well-styled, efficient
small five passenger sedan.
Honda reports that the MSRP will be in the sub-$19,000 range, well
below the current price of the Prius.
Isight Hybrid Bottom Line
The bottom line is that while the Insight's efficiency is set to be
less than the Prius, though the price will be at least a couple
thousand dollars less. Given the historic reliability of Honda cars,
the new Insight should be a great value. Production release is set for
spring 2009.
Of
note is Toyota's plan to release a plugin version of the Prius in the
next model year. The price of the updated Prius and the ultimate MPG
rating of the car may drastically change the gas-electric hybrid market.
