The First Hybrid Car In America Wasn't The One You Think – CarBuzz

Ask most people to name the first hybrid car available in the US, and they’ll probably go with the Toyota Prius. If they really know their history, maybe they’ll cite some early prototype like the four-motor Lohner-Porsche from 1900, but if we’re talking production vehicles, not old-timey horseless carriages, the Prius is a pretty good guess. It’s also the wrong answer.

Honda

Japanese automaker Honda rose from the ashes of WWII and set about its business as a manufacturer of motorcycles initially, only launching its first car, the T360 kei truck, in 1963. Founder Soichiro Honda targeted the American market as the most important nut to crack, leading to generations of iconic nameplates like the Civic and Accord being among America’s best-selling passenger cars. Today, Hondas are renowned for their safety, practicality, and reliability, with a sprinkling of performance from models like the Civic Type R.

Founded

24 September 1948

Founder

Soichiro Honda

Headquarters

Hamamatsu, Japan

Owned By

Publicly Traded

Current CEO

Toshihiro Mibe

The Honda Insight actually beat the Prius to the American market by a nose, first going on sale in the US in December 1999. The Prius would land on American shores the next summer, not even a full year later. While the first-gen Honda Insight hasn’t been completely forgotten, meager sales essentially guaranteed that its place in the hybrid revolution would be largely overlooked.

A Look At The 1999 Honda Insight

The Insight was revealed to the public at the 1997 Tokyo Motor Show as the Honda J-VX concept car, showing off the automaker’s Integrated Motor System, and a new aerodynamic body that looked something like a futuristic take on a Civic hatchback. Fuel-efficiency was improved through the use of lightweight aluminum in the structure, as well as in the engine, which also featured magnesium and plastic components to bring the weight down.

Under the hood, there was a one-liter inline-three engine cranking out 67 horses on its own. A 13-hp electric motor provided a power boost that brought the total output to 73 hp. This was paired to a five-speed manual transmission in 1999, and then a CVT from 2001 to 2006.

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Back at the start of the 21st century, the alien-looking Insight arrived with a 73-hp hybrid powertrain. It was slow, but the 2001 model could hit 60 mpg on the highway in manual guise! The new 2025 Civic Hybrid isn’t as economical (47 mpg on the highway), but it has 200 hp to match the sporty Civic Si, and it no longer looks like a freakish science experiment. These two Hondas show that hybrids have gone from a novelty for early adopters to -in some cases – the most sensible model in a range.

Part of the confusion regarding which hybrid came first may have to do with the fact that the Toyota Prius has actually been available since 1997 in Japan. The Insight wouldn’t hit the Japanese market until November 1999. But, Toyota wouldn’t bring the Prius to the international market for another three years, while Honda released the Insight to America just one month after the Japanese launch.

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At first, Honda’s plan was to sell 6,500 units each year for the Insight’s first generation. In the end, they only sold a total of 14,288 in the United States from 1999 to 2006. Meanwhile, the Prius sold around 15,000 units in 2001, and even that was considered a modest start for the Toyota hybrid. By the time Honda was ready to end the first-generation run of the Insight, the Prius would sell 106,971 units in 2006 alone.

The Long Race To “First”

The history of alternative means of propulsion has always been very stop-and-start, and the late nineties would go down as the era when the dam almost broke. We had an electric Ford Ranger, an electric Chevy S-10, an early version of the electric Toyota RAV4, an electric coupe from GM, and a battery-powered hatchback from Honda, all by the end of 1998. And when was the last time you heard of any of those cars? Looking back, it’s almost like America just wasn’t ready for EVs and hybrids in the late ’90s… but we would be, not even a full year later, when the Prius really planted a flag for its segment in the US. But… why? Why did Americans accept the Prius when we had rejected the Insight not even a year prior?

More often than not, you have legislation and incentives to thank (or blame) for major changes in the automotive industry, but hybrids weren’t exactly a priority for American legislators in 2000. All the big EV and hybrid incentives that really laid the groundwork for the booms those segments enjoyed wouldn’t come until 2011, when then-President Barack Obama announced that he wanted one million battery-powered cars on the road by 2015, pledging $2.4 billion in grant money to that end. Besides, had that money been pledged a decade earlier, chances are that Honda would have benefited just as greatly as Toyota.

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Performance specs might not explain Toyota’s win, either. The first-gen Prius generated 114 hp while the Insight generated 73 hp, but the Insight had the clear win on fuel economy, at 64 mpg combined to the Prius’ 41 mpg combined, and you have to imagine that that would be a key deciding factor for early adopters in the hybrid market.

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Ultimately, the victory likely came down to practicality. Take a look at the first-gen Prius and Insight side by side. The Insight looks like a George Jetson car, it only has two doors, and Honda achieved those impressive fuel economy numbers by shaving this thing down to the bone. The car is tiny and impractical for use as a family vehicle. The first-gen Prius, on the other hand, was a four-door with a more conventional body design and a roomy back seat.

As obvious as it may seem, at the end of the day, you’ve got to consider basic utility. Whether you’re designing a car or a smartphone or a new coffee maker, it doesn’t matter if you’re first to market, and it doesn’t matter if your specs are more impressive, if the competition is more user-friendly.

The Long Tail Of The Honda Insight

While the Insight never really managed to lead the segment it had pioneered, it would be unfair to call this car a failure. The Insight was popular enough to result in a second generation, carving out a niche for itself as the most affordable hybrid in the US for the 2010 model year, starting at $19,800. A third-generation, based on the tenth-gen Honda Civic sedan, would run until 2022, being replaced by the Civic Hybrid. A 23-year run is hardly a disaster for any automaker.

The first-gen Insight is one of the most-awarded hybrid cars of its era, too. The car won the International Engine of the Year award in 2000, it won the EPA’s 2000 Climate Protection Award, and it scored the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s Greenest Vehicle prize on four separate occasions.

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The Insight introduced its share of innovations to the hybrid segment, like the use of lightweight construction materials and an emphasis on aerodynamics. But its greatest contribution to the hybrid revolution may be that it proved you don’t need to be the top-seller to justify your place in the market. That is, with the Insight, Honda showed the industry that the hybrid market is big enough for mainstream family cars like the Toyota Sienna, as well as coupes and hatchbacks with relatively limited appeal, and that’s a win, because few drivers are going to complain about having too many options.

Sources:
Honda Global
, The White House National Archives,
EPA
.