Male Speaker: What we've done is select a short real-world road loop, out here in the Hills of Calvary Arizona. First, we will drive the Insight with all of its green fuel saving high-tech features in place. Then we'll drive it as we would any normal car.
Okay, so we're now about to drive this new Honda Insight in the greenest way possible. Trying to use a least amount of gas and using all of its fuel-efficient technology. So let me walk you through the start procedure and explain what we do as we go along.
Okay. First we just start the car like any normal vehicle. Car comes on, we hit the Econ button which is on the left and it lights up a little green light on the dash. Now the Econ mode does a number of things including influences where the transmission shifts, the way the engine runs, cruise control, the way the engine shuts off, idle stop technology; all in the way to make the car run at the most fuel-efficient way possible. We had even influences when the air conditioning comes on, but since we're trying to be super green, we're going to turn the AC off and roll off the windows for maximum aerodynamics. So it's going to get hot in here.
Now we're ready to go. It's very simple. We want to be green again, so put it into drive and rollout very gently, very smoothly. So here we go. Now we know, we're rolling out very smoothly and doing a good job of being green because the car tells us so.
Right behind the speedometer, is a light. It's a back light and when we do a good job and are being green, it glows green. If you accelerate hard, it glows blue. If you're somewhere in between, its blue-green letting you know that you're kind of half and half. But we're trying to be green, so let's keep it as green as possible.
We're trucking along here, covering about 3.2 miles which is not a very scientific test we're doing, but it will demonstrate some of the cool technology and basically have safe drives.
There are a number of screens in here that tell us what's going on. The most interesting one is the Eco guide, one that shows all those beliefs, where the goal is clutch as minimum, least as possible. At 29, I started at 30 miles per hour, it is showing that we've an instantaneous fuel economy of about 65.9 mile per gallons and that's very good. But here we go.
We're heading up a hill now. I just show my speedo flash to blue-green so I got to ease off the throttle, get back in a green zone for climbing. So here we are; we've crossed the peak. We're here at downhill now. We're all green. Battery seems to be charging, let's check out our instantaneous fuel economy. It's dropped down to 31.1 miles per gallon, but that's okay, because we have a long way to go until we turn around. We should climb by then.
Now again, along with having all these cool things to look at, one of the benefits of driving in a green way is, it actually can be very pleasant in here. It's very quite. The car rides nicely very smooth and you don't pick up a lot of vibration in widows because you actually go very slow, but it's certainly not any kind of penalty box being green.
We have climbed again 51.5 and we're getting close to our eternal point, still climbing, because we're doing a lot of coasting here, we are running up the electric battery, just brought to 60 mile gallon mark, and about to come coasting to a stop. Let's check out what we got.
Okay, here we are and as you can see, we've got 64.8 instantaneous miles per gallon. Now this is very unscientific, I just looked again because I think you just got last calculations 65.1, not very scientific what we just did. But it does demonstrate that the car has a lot of green features. You can return excellent fuel economy without much penalty, as long as you follow some of the rules.
Alright, so we just drove this 2009 Honda Insight in the greenest way possible. It was slow; it was hot because the AC is off. To be honest, it was little boring, we weren't doing anything crazy out there. We didn't get to really ever go full throttle. Again, we were driving very slow.
So let's drive it in a more realistic way. The way a wheel enthusiast or say Motor Trend Editor would drive it and we'll do that first by turning off the Econ mode and switching the air conditioning on. A nice 71 degrees, and we'll shift it past drive and into sport mode and let's get underway. So we're doing a full blue launch which means we're burning the most gas and using up the most power possible.
The first thing you notice is that you can hear the CVT quite a bit more when you're driving this way. Again, when you're driving green, you never have the throttle fully pressed, so you never really run the engine that hard. You never see the roads climb, but when you drive it a more spirited fashion, you have the throttle down. You hear that monotone drone of the CVT.
This is actually quite a fun car to drive when you get it up to speed. It has a very top chassis, you can feel a lot of the bumps in the road, but that's not a bad thing because you can also feel which way the road is going, particularly in the turns. It doesn't wallow around like the Prius, and it really is the sort of defining element of this vehicle is that it returns some driving satisfaction.
Prius is a nice car, really good on fuel economy but it's not the kind of car you want to take on a road like this, that get really twisty. This Insight on the other hand, has very nice steering feel. It reminds me of being like a fit, maybe not as quick to the turns but it does feel very light and very, very stiff. So it's a nice chassis that returns a lot of driving enjoyment.
We are coasting down here, cornering nice and tight on this downhill section and our MPG's are improving. We are back up to 22.8 miles per gallon, not that impressive but I'm having a lot more fun and I'm not sweating because the AC is running.
Okay, here we go. We are coming around the last corner and driving like a regular old Motor Trend Editor, 27 miles per gallon, but we're having a lot more fun doing it. Look like, we did about 28.7 miles per gallon, actually just put over to 29.2, not great. I'm sure that there will be people out there that say, well, there are cars that are hybrids that give just as bit of a better fuel economy.
But again, like I said earlier, this is not a very scientific test. This is a very short course, only 3.2 miles. I drove this vehicle yesterday very much longer, 20 mile of course and I managed to get 64.2 miles per gallon using the car in the very green mode and only 44.1 in the normal sort of Motor Trend's style of driving.
So those are little bit wider, again over a longer distance. This is just to show you what it's like to drive, the 2010 Honda Insight.
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