Honda Insight Reviews

Also have the horrible whistling noise above fifty, very loud with a crosswind. A way around the air cond. turning off at stops is to make sure the temp shows low, not a specific temperature number. Lots of rattles and squeaks. Passenger side mirror came off in car wash, back plastic window cover, drivers side just fell off one day. Mileage stays around 39 combined no matter how I drive, metal (plastic) molding around drivers air vent coming loose, very sharp edge to it. Cut my thumb pretty bad on it, but pushed back in place easily. Just keep your fingers out of it. Air filter clasp made of metal with a plastic piece, left side towards back, plastic broke off first time I changed the filter. Put a larger tire on, that cut down considerably on the road noise. That's about it... good luck everyone. Hope the engineering is better thought out than the body.

Loud whistling wind noise at 50 MPH and above. The car gets decent gas mileage, I cannot complain about it. The wind noise is terrible. The third time the dealer checked it out they said it was coming from the air intake to the engine and they could not do anything about it. Quite frankly, I found the answer hard to believe but there does not seem to be anything I can do about it.

36 mpg city or hwy considering I drive the freeways at 85 mph as often as I can. I also use the A/C full blast almost always.... So pretty darn good gas mileage, I must say. Drives great, very low maintenance, good looking exterior, especially in my snow white exterior and double dutch black tinted windows throughout (including medium gray illegal tint on the windshield).

I bought a used 2010 Insight about a year ago. It had 37K miles. I consistently get 46.9 - 47.3 when checked each 1K miles at which time I reset the trip meter. I was skeptical at first, but checked it by checking mpg the old school way, and it agreed with the car's on-board computer.

I was braking seeing red traffic light, having my nine year old on the passenger seat onto her ballet class. Watching my car kept rolling toward a SUV in front, although my foot on the brake constantly pressing on it, drove me into panic mode. It was 5mph at the collision - air bag thrown with smoke all over, gosh! My little one has a congenial heart condition! The rest was horrible experience, ER and overnight watch for three nights, extra night just for air bag blow on the heart. Air bag didn't even reach my chest, but for the passenger seat and for the smaller person, had different result.

I bought a Honda Insight 2012 on February 7, 2012 knowing that I'm gonna save gas because the car is a Hybrid. After a year of driving the car, I noticed that the 38 MPG initially shown in the dash LCD display keep dropping even I followed the driving procedure to save gas while I'm driving in a highway. On today's date Feb 12, 2014 the MPG showing in the dash LCD display is 35.4, the battery display is discharging rapidly when I drive my car in a uphill. The battery indicator is inconsistent, sometimes its full sometimes its drain. I'm looking forward that the Honda Company in Japan will take immediate action with this matter before some accident may happen in the consumer that may cause loss of life.

I bought a used Honda Insight 2010 with 20,000 miles on it. I was assured by the sales people and owners of the Honda store that it would get 40 mpg in town and 45 mpg on the highway. The first time I filled it with gas, I found that I got about 36 mpg, mostly in town driving. When I complained about it, they found many ways to blame me for the bad gas mileage. I invited them to come for a ride with me to see how I drive, but that didn't happen. They supposedly put the car through their shop and found nothing wrong. I have never gotten close to 40mpg. The mileage that shows on the dash is not accurate either. They told me it only needed servicing at about 7000-10,000 miles, but when I drove it about 3000 miles I had to have it serviced and they warned me about certain filters that were very costly that will come up and have to be replaced. I bought the car because of being a hybrid and with the thought of the good mileage they told me about. Now I feel the whole thing was a very sorry mistake!

I have found this to be true consistently: I drive the 2010 Honda Insight to Jerusalem or to Haifa and of course it does okay on the level roads. When it begins to climb the hills, I noticed that the IMA battery gets discharged and while the car is driving uphill, it begins to charge the Hybrid battery. Sometimes the graph indicates the battery is half full and the IMA is not working. If the battery has power why shouldn't the IMA help the car go uphill? If it charges the battery while the car is going uphill, isn't this the most expensive time to charge the battery and stealing power from the motor? The car consumes gas in stop and go traffic.

Surge of power when you use brake on Honda Insight.

I'm so thankful for Keith of Kenner, LA on Oct. 3, 2012, letting me know I'm not the only one that has the most nerve-racking noises from your Honda Insight. I've called Honda Dealership in Florence, AL several times about it. Had them take my wheels off and see if something horrible was happening to them that was making that noise. They "say" they had one of their people drive it and they didn't hear anything. They also took it to someone to reseal the windshield and it didn't make much difference. Why won't they fix it? I've asked them a couple of times if anyone else has this problem and they said not that they know of. I'm going back and taking a copy of the Complaint that Mr. Keith provided. Thanks Keith for your help!

I love my 2012 Honda Insight. Have had no problems at all. It gets around 51 mpg, sometimes a little less sometimes a little more. Never less than 48. Love it... Love the ride. Not a Lexus but not bad at all for a small car...

When the auto stop feature is engaged when the car is at traffic lights, the air conditioning turns off. The fan stays on but the C SR warms up all too quickly especially on a very hot day. This is most annoying. Honda advised to turn off the econ button and have the fan on 4 bars ... This is not practical. The way I get round the problem is to use the hand brake when stopped. This is potentially unsafe. My preference is to have the auto stop feature disabled which Honda is still investigating.

I'm 2.5 years into ownership of a 2010 Honda Insight. No problems other than a couple of flat tires. Service required is minimal. Now about gas mileage: Best - an incredible 58 mpg (Long Beach, CA to Palm Springs). Worst - 39.5 and never getting on a freeway. The way you drive greatly affects mileage. My partner has driven the Long Beach Palm Springs journey in my car many times and gets consistently 20% less mileage than I do. Without being critical, he is heavy on the gas pedal and on the brakes. Yeah, I recommend the car. It's no Lexus, but even at $5 a gallon gas, it only costs $40 bucks a fill up and you can easily go 360-400 miles. If you're not interested in saving money on gas and tracking your mpg, buy a different car.

To the other poster who had a problem with whistling noises at highway speeds, do not let them feed you that **. It is not the tires; there is a problem with the seal of the windshield. I recorded the noise and brought it to Honda after the first technician said it was the electric motor noise. Well, I'm not stupid and know an air leak when I hear one. Furthermore, I was able to stop the noise by pushing up on the headliner by the interior lights or cracking a window. I've brought it to Honda 3 times for the problem now and finally, they took out the windshield and resealed it. The problem is almost gone. No, almost is not satisfactory, but the noise appears randomly and I cannot make it happen, despite going 90mph with the service manager in the car.

I leased a 2012 Honda Insight in June. Everything was fine until I had to do long distance. I found when I hit 60 mph or so there was a whistling or howling sound that grew louder the higher the speed. When I brought it in to the dealer, its service department reported that the problem was and I quote, "Due to the tread pattern of the tires, that will pick up wind at higher speeds and cause road noise." The noise is worse than irritating - bad as that is - but a safety hazard by distracting me the driver, interfering with warning signals about what other drivers were doing, and hiding about possible problems with the car. When I complained to America Honda and asked for replacement of the tires, I was given the brush off. In the good old days, anyone responsible for making the stupid decision to install such tires would have felt honor-bound to join his ancestors. Nowadays, damn the buyer has become international.

Insight Hybrid computer/brakes/acceleration problem - There was an unpredictable acceleration combined with an unpredictable locking of the brakes. This caused the car to move forward at an accelerated rate with no brake control. It happened twice in a short time span. The first incident was December 28, 2011 and the second in January this year. However, it did not happen in the previous 1 and 1/2 years that I've owned the car. The first time it happened, I had an accident and it impacted my insurance. I was going very slowly up a hill at 10:00 am. It was not snowing and the day was clear and the roads were fairly clear and salted. The light was red far in front of me. I braked to slow down further, and when I was just crawling, I slightly released the brake to roll forward a bit further. But to my surprise, the car accelerated instead of maintaining the slower speed.

The first problem I had with this car is difficulty in actually getting into the driver’s seat. My head knocks against the roof every time. In my case, the driver’s wheel blocks out my view of the speedometer and even some of the other instruments. The brake pedal is too far to the right and not directly under my foot. When I eventually press down on it, the brakes feel spongy. There have been occasions when I have felt almost out of control. The engine feels underpowered and strains noisily. The fuel consumption when I use the car, and I am a slow driver, is quite disappointing. A small petrol car would, I feel, do just as well. It no longer exempts me from the congestion charge. Shortly after I bought it, I found that it has no spare wheel and squirting some gunge that Honda provides into the tire supposedly cures a puncture. It is a cheapskate alternative because most punctures involves the tire ripping. I had to buy a spare tire. Basically, I have come to hate this car.

We went on a 2-week vacation in January and came back to find the battery in our 2010 Honda Insight was dead. I completely charged the battery and inspected the car expecting to find that some light had been left on. I found that there was nothing left on that would drain the battery so completely. We took the car to the local Honda dealer asking them to check the charging system and battery to see if there was a problem. They checked the battery and told us everything was fine and the battery just needed to be charged. In passing conversation with a dealership salesperson, we were advised that we should have taken the battery out of the car and brought it into the house because the batteries in the new cars lose charge. We challenged the service department with this information and they admitted that this was a known problem with Civic, FIT and Insights and there was no solution because there was no more powerful battery that would fit these cars and there was nothing they could do.

I brought a used 2004 Honda Insight 7/31/10, along w/ a new Accord. On 9/16/10, driving the Insight to work, I turned left on to the rd close to work and as I accelerated to clear the intersection there was a pop sound and the car started to sound like a Semi-truck. No pothole hit, intersection newly repaired last year. 9/17/10 went to dealership and was told that the catalytic converter broke its bracket and I need to place the catalytic converter with a new one. The estimated cost $1200-1300 dollars.

While there may be some consumers that have been disappointed with their mileage there are also many of us very happy with the mileage were getting. Potential hybrid consumers should educate themselves better to know if they will get the EPA mileages listed for their vehicles.