2010 Honda Insight; photo courtesy Honda. Click image to enlarge

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By Jim Kerr

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2010 Honda Insight

It’s not often that an automobile dash display makes such an impression that I would deem it worthy of a complete article, but Honda’s new hybrid, the 2010 Insight, has a display that is an exception. This innovative display not only gives you the basic information in a clear manner, it provides additional information to help you drive better. The major impact of the Insight dash display is that it will change many of our driving habits to a more economical style – something worth writing about.

Starting with the basics, the Insight uses a two-tier display similar to the current Civic models. The speedometer is located in its own display near the top of the dash so the driver doesn’t have to take his/her eyes off the road. Other gauges and the information centre (Honda calls it a MID – Multi Information Display) are located in a lower display below the speedometer.

While all the information is useful and some is even interesting, the part that changes your driving habits is colourful. The speedometer uses an Ambient Meter background that continuously varies from a medium blue to a green colour as you drive to indicate how efficiently you are driving the vehicle.

Fuel economy feedback devices are not new. A simple vacuum gauge can be used to indicate more efficient acceleration. Keep the vacuum needle as high as possible for the best fuel economy. Some companies even sold “fuel economy” gauges that had red, yellow and green areas. Green of course gave the best fuel economy. This fuel economy display was nothing more than a vacuum gauge with a colour display instead of numbers.

Electronics have enabled driver information displays that show instantaneous fuel economy and average fuel economy readouts, but like all previous displays, these are soon forgotten as you drive along. Typically the driver only pays attention to these displays when they want to check fuel mileage.

The Honda’s Insight display uses colour to continually provide feedback to the driver on how they are doing. Because it is located right up there as a background for the speedometer, the driver is continually aware of the colour. The display not only indicates how efficiently you are accelerating, but also decelerating.

During acceleration, the display background is usually medium blue. As the vehicle gets up to cruising speed around town, the display will gradually change to light blue and then to green. Stepping on the brakes hard will instantly turn the colour back to medium blue but slow deceleration will keep it in the green.

On the highway, I often found the display showed light blue, but by reducing the throttle and slowing a bit, I could often make it green again. There was an automatic response to the colour display that made me strive to keep it green. I think other drivers will too and their driving efficiency will go up with it.

Below the speedometer, the MID has nine driver-selectable screens. Some of these screens show common trip information such as range, average speed, elapsed time and instantaneous fuel economy, but three of the display screens show new information. One screen shows energy flow, so the driver can tell when the vehicle is operating on battery power alone or a combination of gasoline and battery. Another screen shows the fuel economy history for the last three drive cycles of the vehicle. This information might be especially useful if you have some teenage drivers in your family!

The third screen is called the ECO Guide display. It keeps score of how efficiently you are driving. There is a vehicle lifetime economy indicator and well as indicators for the current drive cycle. A series of five plants across the display have leaves “grow” on them as you drive efficiently. The more plants with leaves, the more environmentally responsible you are driving. If you can get a pair of leaves on each of the five plants, then you are rewarded with a Congratulations trophy display when you turn the car off.

I must confess, I only achieved leaves on four and a half out of five during my drive, but give me a longer time period and I am sure I could win my “Congratulations” display too.

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