The Sunday News
Lovert Mafukure
Petrol is expensive and diesel slowly is becoming less of a favourite for many due to the global warming issues.
Car manufacturers have had to come up with alternatives over the years.
Hybrid electric vehicles (Hev) are some of the alternatives manufacturers have come up with.
Hybrid electric vehicles were preferred over electric vehicles then because they could charge their own batteries while using less fuel than a normal car would use.
Last time we looked at the Toyota Prius and this week we will shine the light on another car that came out round about the same time as the prius . . . The Honda Insight.
The Honda Insight was launched around the same time with the Prius but while the Prius looked a lot like other smaller Toyota cars, the insight didn’t come with a usual design style. It was eccentric, weird and somewhat looked like a Citroen Gs. It was a 2 door car with 2 seats and a high back end to accommodate the big batteries behind the seats.
A Hybrid system is basically a system where a car uses more than one means of propulsion. The Honda Insight beat the Prius when it came to fuel efficiency because unlike the Prius which had a 1,5l engine — it had a 1l 3 cylinder engine aided by an electric motor and huge batteries.
The Insight is very small and weighs about 850kgs. That is a lot of weight reduction compared to the Prius’ 1 300 kilos. Less weight meant more savings on the fuel bill even though it could only accommodate 2 people.
The biggest advantage of having a hybrid car is you can cut your fuel bill by half or more. Since hybrids use both combustion engines and electric motors, they don’t use a lot of fuel when idling or on start up. The electric motor gets the vehicle in motion and will drive the car at low speeds. The car will be silent and will use no fuel at this point. The combustion engine will aid the electric motors when you rev harder.
As I mentioned last week, hybrid vehicles are environmentally friendly and depend less on fossil fuels. While full electric cars eliminate the need to fuel up a car, they need to be charged but hybrids use regenerative braking to get their electricity and use that to charge the batteries for later use. Hybrid electric vehicles act as a bridge between traditional combustion engines and electric vehicles. While technologies are still being developed to extend the range that one can get out of one charge on an electric vehicle, the hybrid steps in with efforts to save the environment and your pocket too.
While hybrids are expensive to buy, hybrids like the Insight make up for their cost in the long run with fuel consumption ranging around 4,5l per 100km. Battery packs are however, expensive to replace when they need to be replaced. In our third world country where hybrids come as Grey imports, one would have to import the battery packs when they die, setting them back a few thousands of the greenback. These battery packs do not come cheap.
Honda managed to do what Toyota couldn’t do on the Prius and that is to reduce as much weight as possible. The Insight weighs in at a lowly 850kg and can only accommodate 2 people at a time. It might sound like it’s a bit selfish but if you are going to save on that fuel bill then you are going to have to be a bit selfish.
The Insight will prove a bit of challenge when it comes to acquiring parts and replacing batteries when the need arises but be that as it may, think of it this way, if you run out of fuel, you have batteries and an electric motor to take you to the next filling station. Till next time . . . Happy Motoring folks!
@lovert116 – Automart Used Spares Centre – Quality Used Japanese Spares -+263 772 33 99 38 – [email protected] – Facebook: @automartusc
