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Honda to end Europe sales of Insight, CR-Z hybrids

Nick Gibbs
Automotive News Europe
February 14, 2014 06:01 CET

LONDON -- Honda will stop selling its Insight and CR-Z gasoline-electric hybrids in Europe because of weak demand.

It's a blow to Honda, which was the first automaker to sell a mass-production hybrid in Europe when it introduced the two-seat Insight in 1999, a year ahead of Toyota's Prius.

Honda will sell off its remaining European stocks of the Insight five-door hatchback and CR-Z sports coupe, a company spokesperson told Automotive News Europe.

A check of Honda's Web sites in Europe's top markets shows that the cars are still listed in France and the UK but are not in Germany, Spain and Italy.

The hybrid variant of the Jazz subcompact will be the only model in Honda's lineup to offer the company's alternative powertrain. Honda said no decision has been made on whether Europe will get the hybrid version of the new Jazz that is due in 2015.

Since debuting its hybrids in Europe, Honda has sold a total of about 125,000, but recent sales have slumped badly. Honda sold 1,242 Insights last year, down 62 percent on the year before, while sales of the CR-Z hybrid fell 66 percent to just 695, according to figures from market researcher JATO Dynamics.

Honda said it sold about 4,500 Jazz hybrids in Europe last year compared with 7,500 the year before.

Diesels favored

"We've had seen a steady sales for our hybrids since we launched them, but recently we've seen a strong demand for low-emission diesel technology," the spokesman said.

The company addressed its diesel weakness last year by adding a new 1.6-liter engine for the Civic compact and CR-V SUV that was engineered for the European market. The Civic's new diesel has CO2 emissions of 94 grams per km compared to 96g/km for the Insight hybrid.

Honda's hybrid fortunes contrast sharply with those of Toyota, which sold 153,000 gasoline-electric variants of its Toyota- and Lexus-brand models in Europe, up from 107,000 the year before, the company said. The majority of those were hybrid versions of the Auris compact and Yaris subcompact, both of which are produced in Europe.

Sehr schade das. Ich hätte mir den CR-Z mit Automatik gewünscht. Ich bin scheinbar ein komischer Exot.

The Insight goes away in Japan

and will be replace by the City Hybrid in April 2014.

With the Fit family of Hybrids there might not be a new Insight but Honda doesn't want to kill the name.

Nachdem der Honda City auf der Honda Fit Platform aufbaut, und in Indien auch mit dem entsprechenden 1.5L Earth Dreams Motor ausgestattet ist, ist es naheliegend, das hierbei auch der SH i-DCD Hybridstrang benutzt werden sollte. In Anbetracht der jetzigen Probleme mit diesem Doppelkupplungsgetriebe sage ich Nein Danke.

Ich denke wir können schon darauf vertrauen, dass es für Honda Sinn gemacht hat, von CVT auf DSG zu wechseln. Und dass sie evtl aktuelle Probleme  kundenfreundlich lösen.

Das Modelle gestrichen werden, die nicht erfolgreich waren, ist allerdings kein Wunder. Wenn ich ein Auto in dieser Klasse gesucht hätte, würde ich einen Prius vorziehen. Oder wenn es kein Hybrid sein muß, einen A3.

Und hackt mal nicht zu sehr auf den Honda-Dieseln rum. Das sind gelungene Motoren, die von Leuten gekauft werden, die dann das bekommen was sie erwarten. Der kleine 1.6er wirkt zudem so kräftig, dass er auch Leute glücklich machen kann, die einen 2l TDI gewohnt sind.

>>>Re: Fit and Vezel Hybrid Problems.    (Score: 1, Normal)    02-14-2014 12:32
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RolledaNsx wrote:
If you would research DCT problems on the Web,you find out most of the DCT problems are with the smaller car models that use the Dry-Clutch style for better MPG.And for two of the makes(Ford,VW) and now three,you will see one name(Lux).

The dry-clutch DCT has been a hit and miss(most are ok,some are jerky,few are lemons)because they can't handle the torque of the engine or stop and go traffic/hills.

Honda thought the Electric Motor would solve the problem when starting from stop(it starts in EV)and smooth the gear changes(electric motor smooths the torque between shifts).
But the Electric motor made the DCT more complex that needs a great software program to run it correctly.

The 8-speed DCT will be dry-ctutch too but will be more simple because it is the first to use a torque converter to solve the jerky problems of the dry-clutch DCT with out the complex electric motor.

The RLX and NSX will have wet-clutch DCT.<<<


Software wise this is not a trivial problem to solve...

Hardware wise too.

Software wise this is a closed loop. You have to run a pretty tight, very fast loop to monitor a lot of parameters and then issue control commands to the clutch, electric motor, etc... this pretty much forces you to run a multi core processor with one core running almost bare metal to do the monitoring, algorithms and commands. Far more complex than a typical automotive engine application.

Hardware wise you have the inertia of the electric motor which may not be able to compensate for the almost instantaneous (meaning high rise time of the pulse) vibrations coming out when the clutch engages. Not easy and not something that can be preprogrammed as the clutch behavior is at the very least dynamic: heat, age, throttle setting... etc... And there's no way to do a calibration every time.

One way to solve this would be to have a large powerful electric motor that get the vehicle going and the clutch gets applied _progressively_ once you achieve some speed.. say 3 or 4 mph... but the end result will be weak off the line performance.

Another is to always slip the clutch... again poor off the line performance.

The easiest way, other than going to the big electric motor/battery -which makes it a hybrid- obviously, is to use a wet clutch or a torque converter as you noted.

I think in this case the automakers have been thinking like hardware guys and assuming this can be "fixed in the software"... often those guys will underestimate the cost of the non recurring engineering effort and long term they are better off specifying more hardware to the bill of materials... yes it adds recurring costs in production but the quality of the product will be better.

Been there.. done that... Good luck.

OT Honda CVT
Ich kenne es nur aus dem Jazz. Dort hatte es auch einige Probleme. Im Jazz Hybrid hingegen hört man selten von Getriebestreß. Wurde es noch in anderen Modelle verwendet?

Honda ends Insight hybrid output as sales trail Prius

TOKYO (Bloomberg) -- Honda Motor Co. will end production of the Insight model, the first hybrid vehicle introduced in the United States, after demand plunged and sales lagged behind Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius.

Honda informed dealers in November that the current generation of the Insight will be discontinued this month and asked them to stop taking orders, said Yuka Abe, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman for Honda.

She declined to comment on whether there will be a new version of the model.

The Insight was the first hybrid vehicle in the U.S. market when Honda introduced it in 1999, seven months earlier than the Prius.

The Toyota hybrid went on to become the best-selling dual-powered car of all time, with cumulative sales of 3.19 million vehicles as of January, according to the company.

By comparison, Honda delivered a cumulative 280,629 vehicles of the Insight globally as of the end of last year, of which 157,275 were sold in Japan.

U.S. sales of the model plunged 18 percent to 4,802 last year, making it the second-worst selling car in the Honda brand lineup, behind only the CR-Z hybrid.

Honda began this month with 237 days worth of supply of the Insight, according to Automotive News Data Center, almost four times the 60-day inventory that automakers generally consider to be ideal in the U.S. market.

Honda stopped production of the first-generation Insight in 2006, before reviving it in 2009. Honda has five hybrid models in its lineup, including the Accord sedan and the Fit compact car.

"The fates of Insight and CR-Z are not necessarily intertwined as they are very different models with very different missions. Moving forward, our hybrid vehicle strategy will focus on new hybrid models featuring expanded application of our innovative two-motor hybrid system with an eye toward significant volume growth. "