Honda is bringing back the Insight. Well, the name.

The car is entirely different.

The original Insight was a two-seater hybrid that was capable of getting 60 miles-per-gallon and able to take you more than 600 highway miles on about 10 gallons of gas. It stickered for $18,880 to start back in 2000, which was the first year it was available in the United States.

The Insight Honda is rebooting for the 2027 model year is an electric crossover that might go about 300 miles before it’s necessary to plug it in again. Honda has not officially announced pricing details as yet but the word is around $35k, give or take.

It is a measure of our regression.

More than 25 years ago, you could have bought a practical little commuter car that might need to be topped off once every two weeks at the cost of less than 5 minutes of your time for about $18k. A quarter century later, for twice the money, you get something that goes half as far that forces you to wait for at least 20-30 minutes to recover a partial charge – which you’ll probably need to do every other day or so, given the range limitations.

Part of the reason why has to do with other limitations; specifically, the practical impossibility of building a compliant new hybrid vehicle that weighs around 1,800 lbs., which is what the 2000 Insight weighed.

It is damned hard to do that when it is necessary – for compliance reasons – to design a car’s body and structure such that it is strong enough to pass muster with 2026 federal rear and side-impact/roof crush standards, plus all the other stuff that has added about 500 pounds to the curb weight of the typical new car. There are no sub-2,000 lb. new cars on the market anymore. The current (2026) Toyota Prius hybrid weighs about 3,100 lbs. – which is part of the reason why it only manages 54 MPG. If it weighed 500 pounds less, it’d be able to exceed the original Insight’s 60 MPG, which is something buyers facing the imminence of $5 per gallon gasoline might appreciate more than “safety” (as defined by complying with various federal government “standards”).

Instead, they’ll be offered another EV that’s also overweight on account of the battery pack it must lug around, which is the main reason why it  can only go about half as far as the old Insight hybrid.

It takes something like 800 pounds of battery to store the electrical energy equivalent of about five gallons of gasoline – which would be enough to take you about 300 miles in the old Insight. The old Insight could go twice again as far because it did not have to burn as much energy to move itself (and its much smaller battery). And because it was a hybrid, the old Insight could be gassed up in just a couple of minutes – whereas the new Insight, being an EV, will have to be plugged in for the usual 20 minutes or so it takes to draw the electrical energy equivalent of about three gallons of gasoline at what are styled – in truly Orwellian fashion – “fast” chargers.

Speaking of that, I have some news to report about a new thing – apparently. I am currently test driving a 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 EV and you have to drive it to a “fast” charger  – and wait there – in order to get some charge, unless you have wired up your garage (this assumes you own a garage) with a 240V (30 amp circuit) “Level II” charging outlet. This EV cannot be charged up using a standard 120V household-type outlet. It’s either the “Level II” or the commercial “fast” charger.

The thing about this is most homes do not have “Level II” capability; it has to be added – by adding the circuit to your home’s electrical panel and then running the wiring to an outlet somewhere in the garage or on the side of your house (this assumes you own a house) that’s close enough to where you park so that you can plug the EV in to charge. This will cost you at least a few hundred on the low end and possibly a few thousand, if your home’s electrical panel needs to be upgraded to be able to accommodate the additional 240V (30 amp) circuit.

It also assumes you have a home – or at least a townhome. If you do not, then you pretty much have to drive to wherever the “fast” charger is and wait there for the 20-30 minutes it takes to draw a partial charge (a full charge will take an hour or longer). You will be doing this probably once a week.

Is this a trend?

Apparently, it is. I have written previously about several other EVs that don’t come with home charge cords; they are extra cost options – and not cheap ones.  Is this a sly attempt to push people to use “fast” chargers exclusively? To be dependent upon them? It is certainly an acknowledgement of the fact that there are lot of people who cannot charge at home because they do not have a home. That is, a single family home or townhouse. People who live in apartments and condos pretty much have to drive to get a charge and so providing a home-charge cord is as pointless as maternity coverage for a 60-year-old single man.

Back to the Insight – which it is in name only. The fact is it’s just another too-expensive EV that takes too much time to charge. It’s a shame that Honda that didn’t try to make a new Insight hybrid similar to the diesel-electric hybrid VW was developing before the company got raked over the coals for “cheating” on government “emissions” certification tests (the “cheating” was so trivial it took a lab to suss out the fractionally higher “emissions” that were produced during wide open throttle operation). This VW hybrid – which looked similar to the original Insight – was able to exceed 100 MPG.

But it got cancelled – along with VW’s entire lineup of TDI diesel-powered cars that got 50-plus MPG without the add-on expense (and weight) of the hybrid equipment.

Point being, efficiency is not the thing wanted. If it were, we’d have access to it. Instead, we get overweight, over-expensive EVs that don’t go very far and take comparatively forever to get going again and – the latest thing – literally tether you to the “fast” charging network.

Why do you suppose that is?

. . .

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