Well, I went for my test drive today. The newspaper item on the car had said it was based on the FCX chassis but the guy in the showroom said it was actually based on the Jazz model.
Anyway, it's a pretty good drive. It's very quiet and you only hear the engine if you're pushing it hard, when the CVT does a fair impression of a "kick-down" and revs hard. I asked about the EV only mode and he said you can't force it to use electric only but he's seen it do it automatically in stop-start traffic when creeping along. There's also no option to charge it at home.
The general handling of the car is fine with a firm but not overly stiff suspension that means you can corner and stop without the car pitching or rolling (something my Accord used to do until I upgraded the suspension). It's also a very well screwed together car with no squeaks or rattles from anything.
The dash has this digital speedo that changes background colour from green to blue if you are braking too hard or getting heavy with your gas foot and a central info panel can flip though a bunch of different pages of statistics, such as trip info (average speed, average mpg, comparisons on how economically you drove compared to the previous 5 trips). One graphic display mode shows whether you are using petrol power or electric or both. Another one grows little plants if you're driving economically and you can grow five of them and then get them to flower if you keep the good work up... Ahhh... cute!
The engine auto stop feature is better than the one linked to the clutch on the manual transmission Civic I drove before. Being an automatic, it now stops the engine seamlessly when you brake to a stop and starts it again as soon as you lift off the foot brake. The car even creeps forward like a traditional automatic when you release the brake. There's just a slight vibration to give away the petrol engine starting. I did notice one quirk in that if you braked to a stop and then shifted the transmission to N or P and let the foot brake go, the engine would start again but now with no possibility of actually moving anywhere (as you're not in gear)... Odd. But if you want to use the engine to power some electrics (headlights while putting up a tent in the dark or powering an inverter or something) then it's probably a useful mode to have. It also means that you can have the air con running while stopped - I noticed that as you stopped, so did the air con (and the ventilation fans, for that matter). The sales guy said that was one of the more aggressive eco-settings of the car. If you don't push the eco-button on the dash, the auto engine stop feature cuts in less aggressively and so the fans and air con don't stop running.
Unlike previous CVT systems, this one doesn't seek to maintain a level RPM engine speed but drives pretty much like my traditional 4 speed automatic but without the shift shocks. If you need to accelerate hard it "holds the gear" for longer or "kicks down", if necessary.
The steering was much improved (the salesman reckoned there was a fault with the electric power steering on the old courtesy car) and the Insight certainly steered with accuracy and fluid analogue control.
My only real beef with the car was the rear view mirror. The steeply sloped rear window with its angular curve half way down the back of the hatch-back door, combined with a horizontal bar and a central rear seat head rest meant that it was quite difficult to see anything out the back window in the mirror. Luckily, the side mirrors are bigger than commonly found and compensated somewhat.
With the extra torque afforded by the electric motor, it's certainly much faster than a 1.3L petrol car of this size would normally be, but compared to my 2.2L Accord, it's a pretty pedestrian rate of acceleration from a stand-still. I've gotten used to being able to dart out into small gaps in traffic, or join a busy motorway from a short on-ramp using the big engine to be able to merge safely with the traffic, getting from 0-30 mph in under 4 seconds or to 60 mph in under 9 seconds. In the Insight, you're gonna be drumming your fingers for a while longer looking for a bigger gap in the traffic.
I didn't get to find out what happens when the battery gets full, as we only went on a few miles test drive but when just lifting off the accelerator to coast to a stop, it only regenerated a little bit according to the charge / assist gauge. As soon as you touched the brake pedal though, the system started to regenerate more and if you actually applied light pressure to the brake, it would quickly go to maximum regeneration and slow the car remarkably. Hopefully they have addressed the unloading of the regenerative braking when the battery is full by either using the ABS pump to assist the foot brake (so it increases foot brake effort equal to the effect of regenerative braking that would have resulted) or they divert the regenerative current to a dummy load to maintain the expected level of engine braking.
It would be easy to implement the brake control method, as the car has ABS with electronic brake force distribution (to shift the braking effort independently between the four wheels when a skid is detected). So, it could use the same system to bias up the braking on all four wheels (if it was tied into the power-train computer) when the battery is full and regenerative braking force has stopped. Using a dummy load sounds like a more simple idea but such a load will generate a lot of heat that would have to be dissipated somehow... Maybe it could make a nice cup of tea while driving down a steep hill.
Anyway, after the end of my test drive the computer reported that I'd been the most considerate driver of the last five occupants. Considering I'd done some simulated overtaking moves and floored it a couple of times from standing starts, I was somewhat surprised to have topped the league of green drivers and made over 60 mpg in economy. Those other drivers must have been real lead-footers
The stereo was a bit of a disappointment, only taking one CD and no option for a CD changer, even on the extortionately expensive DVD sat nav option (over 800 Pounds for what is obviously about 150 Pounds worth of sat nav electronics). I've already got a sat nav on my mobile phone and that cost me just 100 Pounds for the software and maps. The only consolation was that the standard radio can play MP3 CDs and has a auxiliary socket with a USB connection to enable you to plug in an i-Pod or similar.
The stereo is going to be one of the more important bits of kit on such a eco-car, as you aren't going to be enjoying sporty performance on any country lanes or the roar of a big bore engine as a sound-track to your journey. You're just going to be quietly and economically wafting along for mile upon mile and hour upon hour of planet hugging low acceleration and low speed driving... [sigh]... I'm going to miss punting my Accord around the Nürburgring or a deserted Scottish mountain pass. But the age of sensible, responsible, dependable, practical, environmental, (boring) driving is upon us all now so it may as well be in a car of the future, where you can watch the flowers grow on your dash to pass the time.
Now all I need is some money... Luckily, it looks like the UK government is going to follow the Germans and other Euro countries in offering a bribe to folk like me in the form of a scrappage-allowance. This is where they give you 2000 Pounds to trade in your old polluting car for a new eco-car (reducing the number of old "guzzlers" on the road and propping up the ailing car industry at the same time). I'll find out in the budget announcement in a couple of weeks if I'm going to be buying one of these Insights.