honda prius

Honda Insight
Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. are about to go head to head in a high-mileage hybrid smackdown.

In one corner, we have the new 2010 Toyota Prius, the third generation of the most successful gas-electric hybrid on the market by far. Classed as a midsize car because of its interior space, the new Prius weighs in with an EPA fuel-economy rating of 51 miles per gallon city, 48 mpg highway. It's got 24 more horses under the hood than the outgoing model -- combining the 98 horsepower four-cylinder gasoline motor and the equivalent of 36 horsepower from the battery-powered electric-drive system.

In the other corner stands the challenger, the new Honda Insight. The Insight is a smaller car -- it's classified as a compact -- and has a smaller, 1.3-liter four-cylinder engine. It gets its "hybrid" designation thanks to a system Honda calls "Integrated Motor Assist," which uses an electric motor sandwiched between the engine and transmission to give a helping hand to the four-cylinder gas engine. Compared with the hardware-intensive Prius system, this is Hybrid Lite. The Insight's mileage is rated by the EPA at 40 mpg city, 43 mpg highway.


Toyota Pirus

Game over. Toyota wins, right? Not so fast.

Rattling the Champ
Honda has already rattled the champ, and the first round hasn't really begun. Honda priced its new Insight at a shade under $20,000, about $2,000 less than the outgoing Prius base model. In response, Toyota is scrambling to offer a new base-base-model 2010 Prius that will start at $21,000, and held the price of its most popular Prius model at $22,000. The El Cheapo Prius won't arrive until "later this year," Toyota said last week.

A Toyota spokesman said the low-price Prius was planned from the beginning of the program, and is intended for budget-conscious city and state governments that want hybrids for their municipal fleets. But a $21,000 base price Prius will come in very handy for Toyota dealers looking to counter the aggressively low price on the Insight.

Honda has struggled to gain traction in the hybrid segment. Its hybrid Accord model, optimized for power, fared poorly and was dropped. The hybrid Civic has been more successful, but sells only a fraction of the Prius's annual volume. The original Insight, launched in 1999, was the first gas-electric hybrid on the U.S. market and made a splash with its 61 mpg city, 70 mpg highway mileage rating. But the aluminum-bodied two-seater with gawky fender skirts never recovered from the blow landed by the second-generation Prius and faded out of production in 2006.

Honda concluded from the Prius's success that it too needs a five-seater, purpose-built hybrid that functions as a rolling billboard to tell the world "This is a real Green Machine." But Honda is sticking with its bet that the Prius's "two motors for one car" strategy is too expensive and doesn't make sense for value-conscious customers.

The Insight's selling proposition is that it offers minicar mileage in a five-passenger compact with room enough to fit an adult's bike in the back, at a starting price roughly $2,000 to $3,000 below those of other hybrid cars on the market now. The Insight also is priced below the diesel Volkswagen Jetta, which is a solid competitor in the mileage derby at 30 mpg city and 41 mpg highway.

Honda let me test-drive an EX Insight model that had a sticker price of $21,970. With the EX package, you get a few more bells, whistles and toys than the base model: paddle shifters on the steering column, a 160-watt AM/FM/CD player with a USB connection in the center console for your iPod. All Insights have a full complement of safety gear, including side-curtain airbags, stability control and antilock brakes.

The Insight's exterior profile is reminiscent of the outgoing Prius's distinctive lines, reflecting the tyranny of the wind tunnel. The arcing roofline and the hatchback design would severely compromise rear visibility if Honda hadn't put an extra pane of glass in the tailgate. As it is, you have to look past a bar to see the cars behind you.

A Videogame Approach
On the road, the Insight rides quietly. The steering is firm and precise, though this is no sports car. Unlike the Prius, the Insight doesn't have an electric-drive-only "stealth mode." Most of the time, you're burning gas, except when you reach a red light or a stop sign. Then the Insight's engine will shut off until you take your foot off the brake. A little shudder signals the engine is back on after you hit the accelerator, and away you go.

The Insight, like the Prius and the Ford Fusion hybrid, offers drivers an involved videogame approach to maximizing mileage. Hit the big green button labeled "ECON" on the dash to the left of the steering wheel, and small screens in the dashboard display and the car's lighting scheme will signal in various ways whether you are driving for maximum mileage. (At night, for example, the light surrounding the digital speedometer will turn green.)

Eventually, it became clear that to get the best mileage, I should simply engage the cruise control and let the car figure it out. After cruising on country roads, serenaded by spring peepers, I got five leaf icons in the Eco Score screen, and an aggregate mileage as calculated on the computer of 44.2 mpg. (Those who truly master the system will see a "trophy" icon appear in the little information screen.)

The new Insight is a pleasant, highly economical commuting machine. It offers technologies other car makers will roll out in the future as U.S. car makers strive to boost fuel efficiency: the idle-stop function, more assertive mileage monitors, smarter fuel-management systems and electric motor-boosters that are less costly than the Prius's "almost an electric car" technology.

How the competition between the 2010 Honda Insight and the 2010 Toyota Prius plays out will be closely watched in the industry. Low gas prices and a lousy economy have depressed demand for hybrids considerably since the $4-a-gallon days of last summer. Dealers and rival car makers are wondering again whether demand for hybrid cars is almost entirely a function of gasoline prices.

Honda had 4,612 Insights at dealerships at the end of March, one week after the official March 24 launch. Rivals will be looking to see how many moved off the lot in April.