Owners of 2019 Honda Insight

Family was deciding on buying a civic or Insight for sister. I have the civic and love it, but the Insight does seem interesting with comparative pricing to the civic.
How do you guys like it? Any problems so far, also what was your OTD price?

I don't own one but I did sit in one last week. The driver's seat was flat and very uncomfortable. Did your family sit in one yet? I was extremely surprised by that.

I went to the Honda dealer about two days ago to drop off my car for service and I saw the Insight sitting in the lot and I told the service guy it looked interesting. He then I asked if I wanted to take it for a spin since im there and I obliged.

The Good: Right away, I found the interior to be much nicer than the Civic with the stitched passenger dash and overall feel but keep in mind I was in a touring. The infotainment was obviously worlds better than the Civic, and the gauge cluster was also more my style with the analog looking dials instead of the numbers we get on the Civic. When I pulled onto the road the drive was dead quiet and buttery smooth in terms of ride quality. The handling was decent and definitely worlds better than the heinous Toyota Prius. Overall from the limited time I drove it, it seemed to be a great fuel efficient daily driver. What I liked the most however was the fact it looked sharp and totally un-hybrid like and it felt like a normal car that just happened to have electric assistance, which was perfect.

The bad: The seat DID feel kind of uncomfortable and flat just like @slowride said which was a disappointment. Adding onto that, the steering had almost no feel and was pretty much numb to the road compared to the Civic which is what I was expecting. The power was adequate, nothing more nothing less. Other than these things though, pretty much a perfect car.

I don't own an insight but my take is that if she doesn't care about power so much then the insight is overall better in every single measurable way than the Civic. It gets better fuel economy, interior is nicer, infotainment is much better and its price point is around the same. The exact car that I drove at my dealer was selling for $25,991 which in my opinion, is a STEAL for that car. If she is the kind of person who drives spiritedly thought and likes a little power to play with, i'd say a Civic is the way to go because the Civic is obviously better for that kind of thing.

I'm *very* interested in the Insight as well. From the specs and the reviews I've read online, the only major complaint about the Insight concerns the engine noise when the gas engine kicks in, because the gas engine tends to run at high RPM and kicks in even on slight uphill grades or in response to small changes in the load on the electric motor.

There are also generic complaints that the Insight lacks the total power of the 1.5T, with I believe the Insight having a 0-60 time in the 8.5 second range vs. what, like 7 or so for the EX-T 1.5T sedan. Oh, and the Insight EX lacks heated seats if that's a dealbreaker for you.

Basically, as @jred721 said above, if you care about overall power or handling, you're going to want a 1.5T Civic. If you mainly want to get from A to B (as I do, honestly), the Insight is superior at a cost difference of about $1000 (Civic EX-T with Sensing compared to Insight EX).

Has anyone test-driven an Insight and can comment on the engine noise issue? How about reliability, given that the Insight is in its first year of production?

I test drove the Civic Hatchback and the Insight back to back about two weeks ago. Two of my top priorities when shopping was gas mileage and passenger/cargo space (had to be equal to or better than my Fusion). I drove the EX trims of both vehicles, for a pretty lengthy drive of each. I drove the Hatch first, and loved the power and handling but wasn't a fan of the black cloth that was already showing white marks from mild human contact. I drove the Insight EX next, and quite frankly was impressed with the pickup and smooth ride. There was a mild disconnect with the engine speed noise at higher road speeds, but turning up the radio overcame that and I decided I could live with it. The ivory cloth was a drawback. After having a stone leather interior (Ford's version of ivory), I didn't want to go down that road again with keeping a light color clean and I'd already ruled out black cloth from the Civic Hatch. That was going to put me in the next higher trim levels of each (EX-L for the hatch, Touring for the Insight). I loved all the gadgets/tech in the Insight; my co-pilot was very comfortable in the back seat. Once the drive was over, I parked the Insight side by side with the Civic Hatch. I got in and out of the driver's side, passenger side, rear seats; played with all the tech in each. I was all set to fall in love with the Insight, and was comfortable with the drive-train reliability (it's basically the same as the previous Accord Hybrid, just a 1.5L gas engine vs the 2.0L) and overall reliability given the components it shares with the Civic sedan. But then I popped the trunk and the hatch, folded down both sets of seats. And that was where I was disappointed in the Insight. The space isn't bad, but it was less than the car I had, and much less than the Civic Hatch. And since I had ruled out the cloth interior, that was going to put me at the roughly $29K price tag of the Touring trim. After sleeping on it for a week, I chose the Civic Hatchback Sport Touring. It gives me the cargo/passenger space the Insight didn't. But I had to compromise on the gas mileage - only 1.75x better than my previous car versus 3x better with the Insight. If cargo space hadn't been a priority, I'd be driving an Insight now. But, after a week of ownership, I don't regret the decision in getting the Civic Hatch ST as I am enjoying driving the Hatch, and once it's broken in, I look forward to some spirited drives through the north GA mountains.

Thanks for your comments, @Scott_ATL. In terms of the space of Insight vs. Civic, sure, I can imagine the Insight, being a sedan, has less storage space than the Civic hatch, but do you have any thoughts on Insight vs. Civic *sedan*? I had read somewhere that the Insight has two issues in this regard: (1) Insight battery is under the back seat, so the back seat is raised a bit and thus does not fold down as flat as it does in the Civic; (2) Insight middle seat seatbelt can't be moved out of the way when you fold down the seat; not sure if this affects the Civic sedan as well.

Also -- does anyone know if independent shops are able to work on the Insight, or must all service be done at a Honda dealer due to the different engine and battery/electric motor? I've got a local shop I really like that I've been using for my current 2003 Civic, and though I realize I'd need to get warranty work done at the dealer for any new car, I'd like to continue to use that shop for non-warranty work. If I could not do that for an Insight, that's a concern for me.

kc189go said:

Thanks for your comments, @Scott_ATL. In terms of the space of Insight vs. Civic, sure, I can imagine the Insight, being a sedan, has less storage space than the Civic hatch, but do you have any thoughts on Insight vs. Civic *sedan*? I had read somewhere that the Insight has two issues in this regard: (1) Insight battery is under the back seat, so the back seat is raised a bit and thus does not fold down as flat as it does in the Civic; (2) Insight middle seat seatbelt can't be moved out of the way when you fold down the seat; not sure if this affects the Civic sedan as well.

Click to expand...

Back seat position - my co-pilot is 5'10", and had no headroom issues with the back seat of the Insight EX (no sunroof). His hair did brush the roof in the Civic Sedan. (We only sat in the sedan, didn't test drive it.) I suspect with the sunroof in the Touring trim of the Insight, it may have been an issue for taller people. I'm short at 5'6", so I fit in just about anything. LOL

Back seats not being perfectly flat folded down wasn't an issue for me. My old Fusion still had about a 10-15 degree upward angle when it was folded down and that never inhibited anything I need to haul (sometimes smaller furniture pieces {36" x 18-24" x 30", etc}).

Middle seat belt - I don't remember that being an issue for me. I think I was able to wrap it around the the left headrest, or move it out of the way somehow.

One other thing to note, the Touring trim does lose about half cubic foot of cargo space, due to the sub-woofer in the audio system. That lowered the effective height between the package tray and the cargo floor to less than my old Fusion. Yes, I keep comparing to that car, but it was a good car, practical and functional without being an SUV and I'd still be driving it if Ford could have developed a replacement for the defective airbag inflator. I think waiting 3 years was long enough. But that's another story.

Thanks again. I'm 5'9" so headroom isn't likely to be an issue for me either, even in a Civic with a sunroof. I can't see spending the extra dollars for the Insight Touring -- it's going to be a Civic EX or an Insight EX for me.

Once the 2019 Civic sedans hit the lots, I'm going to do as you did and test drive an Insight EX and Civic EX back-to-back.

And I almost forgot -- the Insight comes with no spare tire, just some bogus tire repair kit. You can buy a normal (compact) spare from Honda, and there's a mount for it in the usual place at the bottom of the trunk. Alas, the spare tire kit is not yet available for sale for some reason, even though the individual parts for it are. I'm guessing it will be $250 to rectify this item of Honda stupidity.

See http://hondapartsnetwork.com/assemb...sly-Variable-Transmission-Temporary-Wheel-Kit

Tempted to trade in my Touring for a Touring Insight. The seats and the giddy up is a worthy trade off for the vastly superior mpg the Insight gets.

I work at a Honda dealer so I have driven the Insight. Whenever I drive the two back and forth, I don't see too much of a difference between how they drive except when you're driving it like an enthusiast. If I didn't want a manual car I would have gotten an EX in blue. It looks really nice.

Can anyone tell me if you can view your speed on the Insight as a numerical value (like the Civic) rather than an emulated analog gauge?

civicdabest-foo said:

Tempted to trade in my Touring for a Touring Insight. The seats and the giddy up is a worthy trade off for the vastly superior mpg the Insight gets.

Click to expand...

You'll spend more money trading for the Insight than you will save on gas. Unless, you are doing it purely for environmental reasons and don't care about the financials.

Negan said:

You'll spend more money trading for the Insight than you will save on gas. Unless, you are doing it purely for environmental reasons and don't care about the financials.

Click to expand...

In Canada, Civic Touring with 50k kms will trade in for $20k.

Base model Insight is probably $31k out the door.

Would that $11k be made up with the combined mpg savings of 15 mpg in western Canada where 87 gas costs $1.10 a liter or so for someone who drives 25k kms a year??

I did the math. Being conservative with my estimates, I figure I get ~38 mpg yearly, and figure I'd get ~55 mpg with the insight yearly. Doing the math, switching between liters/gallons and metric/imperial, a new Insight would save about $600 a year in gas.

At $600 a year in savings, I'd break even on the depreciation on the Touring in 18 years

You are right Negan.

I don't know what maintenance costs on the Insight are like though, not much different from 1.5L's I imagine.

civicdabest-foo said:

In Canada, Civic Touring with 50k kms will trade in for $20k.

Base model Insight is probably $31k out the door.

Would that $11k be made up with the combined mpg savings of 15 mpg in western Canada where 87 gas costs $1.10 a liter or so for someone who drives 25k kms a year??

I did the math. Being conservative with my estimates, I figure I get ~38 mpg yearly, and figure I'd get ~55 mpg with the insight yearly. Doing the math, switching between liters/gallons and metric/imperial, a new Insight would save about $600 a year in gas.

At $600 a year in savings, I'd break even on the depreciation on the Touring in 18 years

You are right Negan.

I don't know what maintenance costs on the Insight are like though, not much different from 1.5L's I imagine.

Click to expand...

It's the lifespan and cost of replacement on the battery that most people are concerned with on hybrid.