#170 - The high tech car

Mr Gadget here! The new proud owner of a 2010 Honda Insight. THE GADGET CAR! It has more gee, whiz bang items then anything on the road. It looks pretty plain but with Honda the hidden stuff is all important. This is the hybrid car for the rest of us. Its priced reasonable(approx $20,000) and uses a conservative form of hybrid technology. It has an 98hp gasoline engine and a 10hp electric drive powered by regenerative batteries.

It has plenty of punch driving the mountains of Virginia. We go to Hot Springs from Covington twice a week and do fine in the Insight. We get around 43 miles per gallon over all and have gotten over 47 miles per gallon on trips over 1 hour using highways. The gadgets are all on the inside.

Here is the Insight's instrument panel: The speedometer is at the top and is backlit by a color rainbow that gives you feedback on how you are driving. All the instruments are learning tools to help you get better gas mileage. If you drive economically the rainbow is green, not so thrifty its aqua, press the pedal hard or brake hard and its that dark blue. It becomes a challenge to keep the rainbow in the green when you drive. There are "eco" guides, trip raters, real time and trip mpg feedback displays and lots more to keep you on the green path.

So the point of this car is changing your driving habits as well as using technology to get better gas mileage. I'm slowly changing how I drive not only in the Insight but in other cars. There are supposedly 3 computers in this geeks delight controlling everything from the continuous variable transmission to the trip computer. The heating/cooling system is even controlled to get better gas mileage!

I also enjoy the USB port found in the arm rest. I pulled a 16GB USB flash drive out and filled it with MP3 songs and plugged it in. The over 3,000 songs will take me a bit of driving to go through. Ain't technology grand?