because when I made my purchasing decision, he 2010 Prius was not available. And to my knowledge, it is still not available.
Nice review, but not impartial. I disagree to a point on "EV" in both cars. While both cars are capable, the Honda cannot do so w/o spinning the ICE. In that the Prius consumes less energy to accomplish low speed EV as it's not spinning the ICE under no fuel/no load conditions. Even w/ fully closed valves to reduce pumping losses, there's the inevitable frictional losses to contend with.
While I agree that the EV mode of the Prius is superior, I'm not conviced that the Honda system isn't nearly as capable. I don't think there is much friction because when I let off the gas, but not quite enough to allow the regen to kick in, I can coast with pretty much no gas or electric being used. The car feels just like it is running in neutral. If it were a regular car under the same circumstance, it would really put a drag on the car. After careful consideration I believe the only reason Honda doesn't allow you to take off from a dead start using the IMA is because at some point when you want to go faster the I.C.E. will need to be engaged and doing so would probably require putting the transmission into neutral to spin up the I.C.E. to operating speed. So that would cause the car to jerk or loose power for a moment. There may be other reasons, but that is all I can think of. I know the 13 HP electric motor is plenty to move the car around because I built my own EV conversion using a 10 HP motor and it can drive almost highway speeds with it.
The video is extremely misleading, to the point of greenwashing. Please update it to state the comparisons are to the older model. Several things mentioned are incorrect, since the new model has changed so much. It was nice to see footage of the Insight though. So, thanks for that part. .
Very nice video. I curious - if you disregard the price difference (points to Honda) and the mileage difference (points to Toyota), would you still choose the Honda over the Toyota. If so, why?
I'm very curious how much energy is being consumed by engine spin in fuel cut-off mode. Perhaps you could figure it out with the help of a hill ? Hobbit has said it is about 2 kW in the G2 Prius
You did a very good job with the presentation in the video. I like the relaxing background music. However I think it is very misleading especially the price comparison. You used the EX model to compare (with paddle shifter) with the base Prius yet you listed the base price of the Insight. Alloy wheels <> Steel wheels with covers The base Insight comes with steel wheels. Your EX comes with alloy wheels (like the Prius) but it starts at $21,300. That's more expensive than 2010 Prius base model at $21,000 (pricing just released today). EV mode stands for electric vehicle mode. Electric vehicle does not turn the combustion engine while turning the wheels. The Insight may be able to "coast" with the battery power alone. The electric motor is too weak to accelerate the vehicle. Prius battery can discharge about 3x more power and absorb 4x regen power than the Insight. The Insight may be able to mimic the Prius' functionality but Prius does it 3-4 times better!
The 13 hp MG in the Insight is DC motor. Unlike the AC MGs in the Prius, the DC can overheat and I don't think that assist DC motor is liquid cooled. It may be rated at 13 hp only for short burst assists.
Yes, this is indeed the perennial challenge. From an academic standpoint it is easy to dismiss Honda's electric only propulsion on this basis alone. But, not all gas engines are created equal and the newer IMA power plants sport very exotic low friction engineering that actually works very, very well. While this is no accident, it is also not surprising that many will intentionally (or not) ignore or dismiss this critical point. To put it bluntly, the ICE tech is not shared with any other non-hybrid models for this very reason. You know, there's nothing like getting a Prius II side by side with a late Gen IMA and test the amount of drag in powered glide (no EV, no fuel use and not in N) when going down-hill. I promise you that the final speed of each car at the bottom of the hill will surprise many here. Cheers; MSantos
Heat is never a problem with the IMA motor. Liquid cooling is provided by proxy by the engine block and the hydraulic cooling also afforded by the CVT. The duration of electric only assist is not determined by temperature limits of the motor but rather by the driver's foot, warm-up stage (S3 or better), SoC and overall IPU temperature. In the majority of cases, doing 1 mile or more in electric only is quite doable if your foot and SoC allows it. Cheers MSantos
MSantos, A hill ... I cannot meet you for this, but how about this test: Each of us pick a stretch of road of about the same length, and measure the speed drop in glide mode over a known incline (or alternatively the speed change over the decline). Google maps has pretty accurate altitudes. Start and start speeds are likely to vary a bit, but we can compare kinetic energies. Tyres can be set to sidewall maximums for some degree of normalization. Other than warming up the cars first, and running a couple of times at similar temps, anything else to think of ? Interested ?
Hi SageBrush; We've done this already a couple of year ago on a highway south of me (HWY 12). We used multiple vehicles for the test (the kind of things fanatic hybrid club members do). To keep things fair, I even used one of my 2007 Prius in the test as I keep my cars very "high-strung" in terms of setup. Just for giggles, tires were set at 65 psi on all cars. Anyway, the test also included traditional gas-only cars as we wanted to compare the soft glide drag in hybrids with the FAS technique. Cheers; MSantos
Thanks for the review! One thing though, you can fully recharge via regenerative braking. You can use EV at the top of a mountain or hill and recharge coming down the hill.
