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People who drive hybrids - any regrets?

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I have a '11 Insight with 87k miles, bought it with 1 mile on the odo. Love it, it's pretty awesome. Reliable as hell, only problem I have had is the gas cap strap broke off and replaced it under warranty ...

It's not AWD but I have Blizzak's in the shed and toss them on in the winter.

Drive approx. 600 miles a week, it pays for itself. Literally. Free car over the previous 24 MPG ride. Should the battery pack actually fail, I can still drive the damn thing until I get it sorted out.

I'd buy again.
 
Zor Prime said:
I have a '11 Insight with 87k miles, bought it with 1 mile on the odo. Love it, it's pretty awesome. Reliable as hell, only problem I have had is the gas cap strap broke off and replaced it under warranty ...

It's not AWD but I have Blizzak's in the shed and toss them on in the winter.

Drive approx. 600 miles a week, it pays for itself. Literally. Free car over the previous 24 MPG ride. Should the battery pack actually fail, I can still drive the damn thing until I get it sorted out.

I'd buy again.
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Interesting. So even with a completely dead battery hybrid cars can still drive? albeit perhaps a bit slower?
 
The Honda system still allows it since the gas engine is always on. Its simpler than the system used in most other hybrids. Not sure what happens in a Prius if the pack dies. I'd assume it will still drive on gas only but I've never read about it.
 
Honda's Hybrids I believe can drive with a dead hybrid battery but at reduced performance and fuel economy, but Toyota's I don't think so...the battery is extremely integral in that case. Though TBH my knowledge about Honda hybrid batteries is mostly for the older generation so it's entirely possible that if the battery is bad in the newer Honda Hybrids that the car won't be drivable.
 
Toyota's is more advanced. Honda's is basically a gas engine with an electrical engine assisting it at times.

Actually, very similar to Subaru's design the OP linked.

The Prius is larger and it gets better mileage than the Insight, however, b/c with its more advanced engine, basically it can specialize the gas engine more. The engine on the prius is really tuned for cruising. You can go at like 80MPH with RPM's in the 2000's. Also, the atkinson cycle engine apparently is only really good at highway speeds, lacking torque for lower speeds. Well, the Prius has an electrical engine for low speeds.
 
Honda's hybrid tech is simple and less sophisticated versus Toyota's more advanced system.

With Toyota you can cruise up to a point purely on battery. With Honda you can run on electric power as well in certain cases (mainly dictated by throttle position), but the engine always spins with the valves closed to reduce pumping loss.

But with Toyota's solution, if the battery completely goes p0p you're screwed.

The Insight has a motorcycle-looking standard battery and a standard starter in case the hybrid battery system can't function. The starter on mine has never once tried to turn over the engine, but I've read it will if the hybrid battery is having an issue or you're experiencing sub-zero temps.

The Insight never gets any love or consideration. I don't care, I friggin love mine. I only get about 40 MPG though I find it hard to stay under 80. =\ If I'm not driving like a nut I get about 45 MPG on the highway in the hills.
 
Interesting. I'm willing to bet that the Subaru system is very much like the Honda system, not the Prius system. Essentially hybrid components bolted on around the ICE system. That would explain the less than stellar gas mileage increase.

With this in mind, the Honda system should be way more simple and reliable than the Prius system, no? At least for a car company just starting to figure out hybrids, like Subaru.
 
smackababy said:
I see this every winter. "Oh, I have a Range Rover, I can do 10MPH over the limit with snow on the road just fine!" Funny thing is, these morons drive like that in snow, but if it is just raining during the summer: 15MPH below speed limit...
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They're usually the first ones in the ditch too. I grew up driving in upstate NY, never owned a 4WD vehicle in my life and never put a car in the ditch either.
 
fuzzybabybunny said:
Interesting. I'm willing to bet that the Subaru system is very much like the Honda system, not the Prius system. Essentially hybrid components bolted on around the ICE system. That would explain the less than stellar gas mileage increase.

With this in mind, the Honda system should be way more simple and reliable than the Prius system, no? At least for a car company just starting to figure out hybrids, like Subaru.
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You would think but Honda had a lot of problems with their batteries while Toyota not so much. The main reason I believe the Honda failed frequently was due to the quite undersized battery and larger charge and discharge range compared with Toyota. Honda had like a 900wh battery vs Toyota's 1300wh and supposedly Honda solved this issue by switching to a larger capacity Lithium Ion chemistry... I don't trust Subaru to do a decent job with their hybrid system considering how new it is to them and it's an original design. Also isn't the price premium on the subaru hybrid vs non hybrid so significantly more for a piddly mpg improvement to not make it worth it? I think this is more of an exercise for Subaru to test out hybrid technology rather than a serious effort to improve fuel economy and value to the customer... (Prius Plug-in a good example of a bad value)
 
fuzzybabybunny said:
Interesting. I'm willing to bet that the Subaru system is very much like the Honda system, not the Prius system. Essentially hybrid components bolted on around the ICE system. That would explain the less than stellar gas mileage increase.

With this in mind, the Honda system should be way more simple and reliable than the Prius system, no? At least for a car company just starting to figure out hybrids, like Subaru.
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Quite the opposite.

Think about it: when buying a car, people will advertise "mainly highway miles". Because city-driving destroys a car. It's starting from zero, it has to come to complete stops, city-driving is tough on a car's mechanical drivetrain.

With the Prius, pretty much the gas engine is only used for "highway miles". The two drive systems are used for where they excel: electric for city and gas for highway. This results in less wear on the highly complicated gas engine. So more reliabilty.
 
desura said:
Quite the opposite.

Think about it: when buying a car, people will advertise "mainly highway miles". Because city-driving destroys a car. It's starting from zero, it has to come to complete stops, city-driving is tough on a car's mechanical drivetrain.

With the Prius, pretty much the gas engine is only used for "highway miles". The two drive systems are used for where they excel: electric for city and gas for highway. This results in less wear on the highly complicated gas engine. So more reliabilty.
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This is not really the case unless you're talking about the plug in version. The gas engine is used to recharge the hybrid battery when it is depleted and to power the car under moderate to hard acceleration including freeway driving (although, it will turn off when you let off the throttle while going downhill). The gas engine is constantly starting and stopping even in city driving. It takes a really light foot to keep it from running at all in city driving and you will quickly deplete the battery by using electric only for very long which will make it necessary for the gas engine to kick on. Basically, anytime you are decelerating or stopped the gas engine will turn off immediately and activate regenerative braking to save fuel. I've been able to drive a few miles using electric only but you will need the gas engine in city driving, at least that is the case with my car (which is basically the same as the Prius but with a slightly larger ICE).

The gas engine is also not "highly complicated." For one thing it doesn't have any belts, no power steering pump, none of the parasitic drag that a conventional gas engine has nor do they require any more maintenance than what a regular car needs. As for the hybrid battery I doubt you'd ever have to replace it before 100,000 miles, probably more likely between 150,000-200,000 miles.
 
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2001 Insight 5-speed here. I love this car, it's got 190k on it. I replaced the hybrid battery at 165k (cost was $1200 for higher capacity NiMH pack and I sold the original for a few hundred bucks)... so that's one major expense, but other than that it's never had a problem. I paid $7500 for it with 130k miles and used to have carpool access. I think this was a great deal still and never want to sell this car.

Favorite hybrid features are auto-stop (shuts off at stoplights so it's silent and doesn't waste gas), tons of extra torque at low RPMs, and regenerative braking (allows some very heavy braking on steep twisty roads with no fading and saves brake pads).

Non hybrid features I love are the 5-speed with a hybrid and nimble chassis / super low weight due to aluminum build, and it has "lean-burn" ~25:1 air fuel ratio at 2000-2500 RPM, so if you go 40-60 mph in this range you can sustain 100 MPG. No joke!

When the hybrid battery on mine died, I drove the car for a couple months. I kept the dead battery (65 lbs) in but could've removed it to make the car a little quicker. This one's geared for the extra torque from the electric motor, so it can do 60 MPH in 2nd gear... take away the battery and it's a lot slower. But if it had a normal 5-speed ratio with shorter gears (~4:1 instead of 2.5:1 etc) it'd probably be a lot faster. It is just a 1 liter afterall 🙂

Since auto-stop doesn't work when the battery is out, it uses the normal starter motor instead of the instant / silent IMA start, and uses more gas at idle. At freeway speeds gas mileage was the same. Average it was getting around 60 MPG before the battery died, about 50 with it dead. But I was driving really differently. 0-60 was down by like 2 whole seconds without the hybrid assist.
 
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JulesMaximus said:
This is not really the case unless you're talking about the plug in version. The gas engine is used to recharge the hybrid battery when it is depleted and to power the car under moderate to hard acceleration including freeway driving (although, it will turn off when you let off the throttle while going downhill). The gas engine is constantly starting and stopping even in city driving. It takes a really light foot to keep it from running at all in city driving and you will quickly deplete the battery by using electric only for very long which will make it necessary for the gas engine to kick on. Basically, anytime you are decelerating or stopped the gas engine will turn off immediately and activate regenerative braking to save fuel. I've been able to drive a few miles using electric only but you will need the gas engine in city driving, at least that is the case with my car (which is basically the same as the Prius but with a slightly larger ICE).

The gas engine is also not "highly complicated." For one thing it doesn't have any belts, no power steering pump, none of the parasitic drag that a conventional gas engine has nor do they require any more maintenance than what a regular car needs. As for the hybrid battery I doubt you'd ever have to replace it before 100,000 miles, probably more likely between 150,000-200,000 miles.
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Well, okay. Still, the operation of the gas engine is heavily pampered by the car's software. It won't face near the amount of strain that a conventional ICE engine car sustains.
 
I saw the K-swapped one in WA (the red car we all see around a lot!) sold for about $10k last year. I alllllllmost bought it, but had just picked up an S2000 so thought I should keep a stock Insight and the S2K. What a sleeper though 🙂
 
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