|
---|
Thursday, February 5, 2009
With respect to the 2010 Honda Insight, Honda is guilty of copying no one but itself.
The Toyota Prius has this very arrangement. But so did the 2000-'06 Honda Insight and the 1988-'91 Honda CRX before it. That the 2010 Insight looks this way is no accident, because Yasunari Seki, chief engineer for the 2010 Honda Insight, made his name at Honda while working on the CRX HF. And that's just what the 2010 Honda Insight is, more or less: a hybrid version of the late Honda CRX HF, but with four doors, room for five passengers, up-to-date safety features and modern conveniences.
Honda wants the 2010 Insight to be affordable enough for almost anyone. And it wants the Insight to be the kind of hybrid that provides measureable benefits without introducing day-to-day eccentricities. To these ends, Honda has not developed an all-new hybrid system with dual electric motors and a complex series-parallel arrangement, like a Prius.
Official pricing is not due until we get closer to the new Insight's release date of April 22, 2009 (yes, that's Earth Day). But the base LX model's price is expected to come in well under $18,000. We figure that this fully optioned 2010 Honda Insight EX-Navi (EX with navigation) should cost less than $22,500 — at least $5,000 below a comparable Prius.
© Source: edmunds
We need your comments below >>
Labels: 2010 Honda Insight, autonews, Honda, Honda Insight