Hi, my name is Sue Jones and I am new to GreenHybrid. I am the proud owner of a 2000 Insight. I hope to gain more insight by joining these discussions!

In April I bought (from the estate of a friend) my Insight which had under 38,000 miles. The car had averaged 58.9 mpg over the life of the car with most of that driving in Western Pennsylvania. I live in Ithaca, NY at the top of the county, and my mileage around Ithaca averages 52+ mpg. On a trip from Ithaca to central OH, I got 66.1 mpg and on the return trip through Pgh and back to Ithaca, the round trip was 64.4. I am still learning how to drive the car, how much to use the Assist and how closely to rely on the indicator for shifting gears. I am now “giving more gas” to use the assist more than I did in the first few months and it seems that miles/gal are increasing. I was a bit scared about using too much Assist and the consequences of draining the battery.

Sometimes the Assist Battery is fully charged and then, rather unexpectedly, the amount of charge goes way down, under conditions that do not normally cause this to happen. Something I am doing? At other times the battery charges fully, faster than I would expect.

What happens when the charge becomes very low? I know that the auto-stop won’t work when the charge is low, but are there other things that would fail? Could I continue climbing a steep mountain as long as there is enough gas in the tank?

I have had 3 instances of the car not “starting” again from auto-stop. Two of these times, it started within seconds and I wondered if I really had experienced a problem. The first instance the car was still basically warming up, less than a mile into the trip. The third time, in the middle of the summer, I had been driving for over 10 minutes, stopped at a Stop sign, the Auto-Stop blinker was on, but the car would not start up again. I turned the engine off and tried several times to start it, then 5 or so minutes later, it started up. I haven’t had any problems since.

I also have a 1991 Honda Civic Hatch with 140,000 and I am now using with it what I am learning from driving the Insight. I had never gotten more than 41 mpg, but this September, coming back to Ithaca from New Brunswick, Canada, the Civic averaged 51.4 mpg!

 

Sue, have you had the car in for service. The car should always start after AS. If it does not, you have a problem. IE fuel pump, fuel injection needs cleaning and more. I'm not a expert on the Insight, so maybe some of the the experts will come around. You purchased a great little car, enjoy! H

 

I've never heard of an Insight, or any other Honda hybrid not starting after autostop before (though my ex-boyfriend did joke it would happen to me).

I've only been over mountains once in my Insight, actually that was also the first time I have driven in mountains... I didn't find it to be very pleasant. I would not want to try going up a mountain without any battery.

Your charging sounds like recals (one L) do a search, you'll find plenty on it. It's a normal thing that happens as the battery ages... It is a sign of age though, and could indicate your pack may fail soon. Ideally you don't want recals to happen and can reduce their frequency by trying not to use assist. They occur more often in manuals than the CVTs (better battery management of CVTs is probably part of the reason manuals aren't available in hybrids anymore). Like I said do a search, and visit InsightCentral to get more expert opinions, I haven't had much real life experience with recals.

Welcome and congrats on the mileage boast in your Civic hatch!