2019 Honda Insight: Five Insights After Seven Months and 7,000 Miles
Long-term update 3: Thoughts on Honda Sensing's driver-assistance features
In the seven months we've had our 2019 Honda Insight long-term loaner, we've logged just over 7,000 miles of mostly stop-and-go city driving. We've used our drive time to test the Honda Sensing suite of driver assistance features, primarily adaptive cruise control (ACC) and lane keep assist (LKA). Although the systems must be activated separately, they work well in concert and provide just the tiniest taste of what a driverless future may hold. To be clear, the Honda Sensing system should not be confused with an autonomous driving system. The driver still must keep hands on the wheel; otherwise the system will light up an alert in the instrument cluster before shutting the systems off completely. With hands on the wheel, ACC and LKA systems activated, and a cruising speed set, the Insight stays within well-marked road lines and moves with the flow of traffic, even down to a 1- to 2-second full stop before resuming travel again. With a stop longer than that, the driver has to tap the accelerator to reengage the ACC system. It's all quite civilized—and remarkable for our $25,229 hybrid. What else have we learned?
Read more about our 2019 Honda Insight EX long-termer:
- Arrival: Third Gen's A Charm?
- Update 1: The 1,100-Mile Road Trip
- 5 Quick Insightson the 2019Honda Insight
- Update 2:How Prius Performance Compares to Our Hybrid Honda
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Because ACC can track the car ahead and provide a safe following distance and LKA keeps the Insight centered in the lane, it's easy to think the systems see everything else around you—including approaching stop signs and signal lights turning from orange to red. But they absolutely do not, so stay alert and engaged.
Say you have ACC set to 35 mph and it's tracking the car ahead. You're both approaching a 90-degree right-hand turn, and when car ahead slows, so does your Insight. But when the car ahead makes the turn and disappears from view, your Insight no longer registers it, and thus speeds up—right into the corner. Not exactly what they teach you in driver's ed—and another reason to remain ever vigilant.
In another scenario, imagine you're cruising with the ACC set to 35 mph again, but this time there's no car being tracked immediately ahead. In the distance, there is a car in your lane, stopped at a signal; the Insight should register it soon enough and begin braking. My issue is one of personal preference: The system responds slower than I'd like. If I wait for the system to engage, the response feels more like a panic stop, which is in marked contrast how smoothly the system works in stop-and-go traffic.
At last year's Car of the Year program, the Insight was unanimously dinged for its hybrid powertrain, which was deemed loud and thrashy at wide-open throttle. Turns out this is a rare use case in daily city driving—at least for your author. From home to work, stop light to stop sign, the Insight's one-speed transmission and 1.5-liter motor-generator provides smooth, brisk-ish acceleration, with only a hum if you go past ¼ throttle. Any less, and you're probably driving in EV only mode, which is nearly silent. Drivers who regularly merge onto freeways or require brisk, sustained acceleration may find the powertrain annoying, since the thrashiness is always lurking just underfoot, should you push hard enough.
Right around the 4,000-mile mark, we noticed a creak that seems to emanate from the dashboard above the glove box. The noise is vibration related and appears to correspond to the motor-generator running (while charging the battery) and/or the roughness of the pavement under the tires. The climate control fan is also a bit noisy, though we're not sure this is a new issue since we've only recently started regularly running A/C thanks to the start of summer.
We're having the creaks looked at during our first service appointment and will report back posthaste. If you have any insights (or questions) about the Honda Insight, please send them to us at motortrend@motortrend.com.
I used to go kick tires with my dad at local car dealerships. I was the kid quizzing the sales guys on horsepower and 0-60 times, while Dad wandered around undisturbed. When the salesmen finally cornered him, I'd grab as much of the glossy product literature as I could carry. One that still stands out to this day: the beautiful booklet on the Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX that favorably compared it to the Porsches of the era. I would pore over the prose, pictures, specs, trim levels, even the fine print, never once thinking that I might someday be responsible for the asterisked figures "*as tested by Motor Trend magazine." My parents, immigrants from Hong Kong, worked their way from St. Louis, Missouri (where I was born) to sunny Camarillo, California, in the early 1970s. Along the way, Dad managed to get us into some interesting, iconic family vehicles, including a 1973 Super Beetle (first year of the curved windshield!), 1976 Volvo 240, the 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic station wagon, and 1984 VW Vanagon. Dad imbued a love of sports cars and fast sedans as well. I remember sitting on the package shelf of his 1981 Mazda RX-7, listening to him explain to my Mom - for Nth time - what made the rotary engine so special. I remember bracing myself for the laggy whoosh of his turbo diesel Mercedes-Benz 300D, and later, his '87 Porsche Turbo. We were a Toyota family in my coming-of-age years. At 15 years and 6 months, I scored 100 percent on my driving license test, behind the wheel of Mom's 1991 Toyota Previa. As a reward, I was handed the keys to my brother's 1986 Celica GT-S. Six months and three speeding tickets later, I was booted off the family insurance policy and into a 1983 Toyota 4x4 (Hilux, baby). It took me through the rest of college and most of my time at USC, where I worked for the Daily Trojan newspaper and graduated with a biology degree and business minor. Cars took a back seat during my stint as a science teacher for Teach for America. I considered a third year of teaching high school science, coaching volleyball, and helping out with the newspaper and yearbook, but after two years of telling teenagers to follow their dreams, when I wasn't following mine, I decided to pursue a career in freelance photography. After starving for 6 months, I was picked up by a tiny tuning magazine in Orange County that was covering "The Fast and the Furious" subculture years before it went mainstream. I went from photographer-for-hire to editor-in-chief in three years, and rewarded myself with a clapped-out 1989 Nissan 240SX. I subsequently picked up a 1985 Toyota Land Cruiser (FJ60) to haul parts and camera gear. Both vehicles took me to a more mainstream car magazine, where I first sipped from the firehose of press cars. Soon after, the Land Cruiser was abandoned. After a short stint there, I became editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Sport Compact Car just after turning 30. My editorial director at the time was some long-haired dude with a funny accent named Angus MacKenzie. After 18 months learning from the best, Angus asked me to join Motor Trend as senior editor. That was in 2007, and I've loved every second ever since.
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