Honda Insight a Flop?

Bloomberg reports that Honda has dialed-back its US sales predictions for the Insight hybrid by a third. "First-year Sales of Honda's gasoline-electric Insight, which debuted at U.S. dealerships in late March, may be between 50,000 and 60,000 units, John Mendel, the company's U.S. executive vice president, said in a June 11 interview at Honda's U.S. headquarters in [...]
Read More: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/honda-insight-a-flop/

 

The auto market is poor so demand in general is muted.
Hybrid sales are best when gas prices are high so with lo gas prices
demand for hybrids
is not as high as it could be. The reason for the lower gas prices is
the poor outlook
for the immediate economy.

 

Doesn't qualify as a SULEV...

 

Folks are waiting for either Honda or Toyota to release a version with
lithium ion batteries. I'm hoping next years Prius will finally
deliver.

 

I can hold my breath for about 6 1/2 minutes. Can you hold your's for
longer? Much longer?

People are pointing at laptops getting longer lives out of their
lithium ion batteries, but most of those also run cooler processors
and the power management slows them down. That 3GHz quad you just
bought? Probably runs two processors at 1.33 GHz (FSB speed).

I'm making more of a bet on plug-in hybrids first.
--

- dillon I am not invalid

"Jimmy, I'm sorry your girlfriend turned out
to be a cylon."
-Special Agent Tim McGee, "NCIS"

 

This year's so called third generation Prius was originally expected
to deliver with lithium ion batteries. They upgraded every subsystem
except the batteries. I think lithium ion batteries are ready to go
but some safety issues are lingering. I'm guessing another year of
safey testing and tweaking and we will be there. Lithium ion
batteries should boost the Prius (and the Insight) into the 70+ MPG
range.

 

The 3rd gen Prius has a bigger NiMH battery but many were
hoping it would have been a Li-Ion battery all the same.
Toyota is testing the lithium ion batteries. The challenge is
more of a marketing issue. The way Toyota makes the battery
last over 15 years is that the battery is never allowed to
discharge over 66%. Given those restrictions the EV mode
range of a LiIon battery Prius is still pretty limited while
the cost is significantly high. It sounds like Toyota has the
heat dissipation problem licked but they are not getting any
significant performance or energy efficiency increase that
would justify the extra cost of LiIon batteries. To get any
significant increase in energy efficiency the Prius needs
to go on a diet - its too heavy.
..

 

A123 phosphorus battery technology?