The Electrified Car Continuum: Volt vs. Insight

If the Chevy Volt is what’s next, the new Honda Insight is what’s now. While the stock market and new car sales are tanking, the end of the decade is shaping up to be the most interesting time for powertrain geeks and new car buyers since, well, in a while.

The Volt and the new Insight can rightly be seen as bookends to the “electrified car” continuum over the next few years; the Insight is essentially the 1.3 liter mild hybrid already found in the Civic Hybrid. Unlike the Prius, which can run on electricity alone up to low speeds, the Insight’s gas engine will always power the car with assist from a small electrical motor. The Volt, of course, will run with no gas at all up to forty miles, afterwhich a small (but interestingly, bigger than the Insight’s) 1.4 liter engine charges the battery.

In the future, all automakers will likely offer a broad spectrum of efficient technologies, possibly in the same car, as it the case today in Europe: the entry level models of many B- and C-class cars use small, inexpensive gas motors, while the top of the range typically sports a high-tech, direct-injection turbodiesels.

And this is where I think it gets really interesting . . .how will the “low-end” of the mild hybrids (e.g. Insight-like) compete with the “high end” of the advanced “traditional” powertrains like turbodiesels? Today, at least in Europe, the diesels win by an enormous margin.

The turbodiesels are typically much torquier and more efficient than the mild hybrids, but as Honda comes out with a $19K starting price on the Insight, the turbodiesels might feel added pressure to continue to take cost out. To say nothing of the surge in advanced gas turbos . . .

Powertrain geeks and greenies rejoice, ‘cause these are the good old days.