London Times on the Honda Insight: "Biblically terrible"
Jeremy Clarkson's review of the Honda Insight for the London Times made me grin, which is as close as I ever get to LOLing at something I read to myself.
The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE HybridIt doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.
And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.
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Ha! He's being gentle. Jeremy has a terrible bias, he only like very fast, powerful and expensive cars. But if you like his style, you'd definitely appreciate Top Gear on BBC America
As much as I like Clarkson, I don't expect him to understand any of the technology he reviews or like anything that doesn't fit his expectations. Still enjoyed the review, though.
This does seem a little stodgy. CVT can be pretty great. It lets an engine run at its peak efficiency over a wider range of ratios and output speeds since it doesn't have fixed gear ratios. One of the noted effects of optimized CVT is a lack of traditional "engine torquing the car" feel, but I'm guessing that might just be the inevitable dampening of science in the face of internal combustion. Some previous CVT vehicles (like the Nissan Murano) have made feel-good concessions at the expense of peak efficiency. Clarkson might be clinging to a dying physical sensation.
Funny guy, but he's full of crap. CVT is a good, economical choice for the Insight. It's not a drag racer and if you don't insist on thrashing it around like a jackass it will do what you want it to do - get you from point A to point B using little gas. CVT transmissions have been around in cars for at least 5 years and in other machines for years and years. We'll be riding in hover cars before hydrogen gets popular.
clarkson is a boob. he gave pretty much the same rant about the 1st and 2nd gen priuses. he's always on about how the extra (electric) motor and battery are bad for the environment, but for the sake of entertainment he took a perfectly good 1st gen prius and destroyed it with a 50cal machine gun.
toyota's CVT is more elegant than honda's, but i would not say that it "doesn't work." it works fine. you put your foot on the gas and the car moves forward.
Clarkson is very good at the tortured phrase, and stars in the best tv comedy show (possibly excluding 'coupling') ever but really, nobody should take his opinions anymore seriously than one would those of conservapedia, or wingnut daily, or similar. Just laugh with him and enjoy the show. I think he's actually rather smarter than he makes out in his public persona but maybe that's just wishful thinking.
As cromulent1 points out, CTV is a really good thing for engine efficiency. It's tricky to engineer, but I hope to see it on more cars.
As for it not feeling right, automatic transmission didn't feel right to a market that was used to changing gears manually, but it still caught on.
Funny review though. I like this guy's style.
Pedant Alert - there's no such paper as the "London Times". If you mean "The Times", say as much. You can already distinguish it from, say, an abbreviated form of the New York Times by italicising and capitalising the "The".
Sorry, pet Brit gripe. It's this mistake, along with the phrase "The British Language" that completely ruined a Tim Powers novel for me a couple of years ago...
...also, though the review is quite funny, Clarkson is a well known climate change denialist twit, with a rabid following of "blokes", a good line in virulent homophobia and possibly the most annoying voice on television.
Clarkson has a fabulous way with words but he's a comedian at heart, he seems to care about little except getting a big laugh. And I'm sure I remember his column excoriating the Volkswagen Phaeton as the most awful car he'd ever driven, and yet a year or two later the same column was praising it as the most wonderful car ever created. So, he's a tad fickle...
Like most partisan pundits, he *is* an entertainer first and foremost. That said, he's also someone who gets great fulfillment from the act of actively driving a car, versus merely using it as transportation.
CVTs and automatics may make rational engineering sense on paper - and they make driving easier for those who don't wish to learn the simple operation of a clutch, but they don't allow immediate access to the actual output of the engine - which at best results in an overall lower efficiency (look at most manual vs. automatic fuel economy readings), and at worst presents a serious safety hazard (merging, emergency maneuvers, etc), not to mention the significantly more frequent need for using the car's brakes.
The nonlinear power delivery of a CVT and the hesitation of an automatic to "find the right gear" are pretty confounding once you're used to having precise dynamic control. Think of gamers complaining of laggy ping times.
Automatics are also largely a US phenomenon. Go figure.
As to the Insight - its built at a lower price point than the Prius, and even the hybrid-friendly auto journalists are noticing that in some fairly unflattering ways. Kind of a shame. It sounds so good on paper.
Excellent - but please don't call it the London Times - it's The Times, pure and simple.
"destroyed it with a 50cal machine gun"
That is kinda cool, though.
"The Times" doesn't work very well in many contexts outside the British, because there are other newspapers referred to that way. It will not reliably avoid confusion. "The London Times" works, with the sole, minor downside that it occasionally incites Basil Fawlty types. "The Times of London" might avoid this in the case of all but the most determined to complain.
Oh please, call it "The Times" or the "The Times newspaper". Anything else just sounds ridiculous.
In any case, surely the headline should read "Jeremy Clarkson on the Honda Insight".
"Oh please, call it "The Times" or the "The Times newspaper". Anything else just sounds ridiculous."
Agreed. For Christ's sake, Cory, you live here.
Ah, regionalism in all it's un-self-aware glory!
Clarkson is known to many as the kiss of death for most products if he likes them, so the new insight will most likely sell very well!
As for the CVT it is an unfortunate nessicary comprimise to ensure that the vehicle is able to recover energy during braking as the early IMA with a manual transmision required the driver to shift down during breaking and remain in gear for as long as possible. This is due the the electrical machine being mounted between the engine and the gearbox ergo the driver can disconect the motor from the driveline and coast to and stop with nill braking energy recovery. A CVT removes this problem and has the bonus of being able to keep the motor in its efficient operating area for longer during breaking. The big developments on Hybrid vehicles is Light comercial vehicles (LCV's) which travel many more miles than passenger vehicles and are used in drive cycles that most benefit from hybrid assist strategys e.g. urban stop start
Funny I read his review 3 days ago while looking for reviews of the Insight.
To move us on to the "talking about people talking about the article" stage:
Sad how nobody tries to defend their own opinion, instead deciding to flame the guy they disagree with.
Clarkson = Master of the mean mangled metaphor
CVT has been around since the fifties even. First used in DAF's, later in the Volvo 300 series, which, coincidentally is also a car Clarkson hated with a vengeance...
On Jack Farr’s 'Radio Show' on CBC Radio, Bill Casselmann used to do the movie reviews.
http://www.billcasselman.com/
His review of 'Conan the Barbarian' was scathing: "The fight scenes are impressive. But the problem with this movie is the parts between the fight scenes...where they're talking."
Then a month or three later, he was reviewing another film (I can't remember which) and he began: "This film made me pine for Conan the Barbarian..."
I threw myself across the room to turn up the volume on the radio; this was going to be a good one!
To be fair Clarkson tends to judge a car on whether it is a good car to drive. Many of the things he complains about might not bother a lot of people who would be perfectly happy with the car. He, however feels that they make the car terrible.
Also +1 to JCONLI1 @ #10
Another point, the reviews are pretty much entertainment.
I thought Clarkson wrote for the Times of Manhatten?
This is so confusing!
Good grief!
His article was in THE SUNDAY TIMES.
Get it right, please.
And as for the London Times - well if we were still in Victorian ...
No, wait - I get it now - Mark was being all steampunky!
PS This has already been covered on BBG - seems like BBG and BB are increasingly becoming de-linked. I've seen a few stories repeated on both rather than cross-referred as used to be the case.
Clarkson does like non-super cars as well. For example, he really like the Euro spec Ford Festiva... as well as the Mondeo and Suburu Legacy
Jeremy Clarkson is an entertainer and a comedian who happens to talk about cars. He is very knowlegable and his main programme (Top Gear) and its spin-off magazine do provide some well-respected reviews, but I dont think anyone takes his rants too seriously.
Besides, how many of the people who'd take Clarkson's "biblically terrible" review seriously are the same people likely to spend their extra cash on a hybrid car?
And because I'm a pedant:
Britain's The Times on...
UK's The Times on...
The Times (UK) on...
TheTimes.co.uk on...
We're fully aware that The Times isn't the only newspaper in the world with that name, although I wouldn't be surprised if it was the first. But there are plenty of ways to refer to it unambiguously while still using name that it's had for over two centuries, and that is written at the top of every page.
It's not exactly something I'm going to lose sleep over, it just seems weird to hear the name changed to an American-sounding version.
Clarkson is a boob. I've got a 2003 Saturn VUE with a CVT (well, Saturn called it VTi) tranny in it. It runs perfectly well, though it takes a little adjusting of your accelerator foot. I can move from 0-60 at a reasonable clip without ever revving the engine over 2500, though I doubt that's Clarkson's criterion. It's a perfectly serviceable technology. Just because it doesn't grab a wheel when you stomp on it isn't a reason to denigrate it.
And NPR always seems to refer to it as The Times of London.
Well one good thing this interweb thingy has done for me is that when I see The Times, I think, "Yea that London version of the Times, not that New York thingy or my own Los Angeles Times...nope..it's THE TIMES"
Maybe if newspapers wouldn't keep naming themselves Times this or Times that none of us non-London folk would get confused. Of course the first thing I think of when I hear Time is Morris Day and the Time. But that's just me.
If you want to get to point B from point A, anything will do. If you want to enjoy the drive, well that's something completely different.
Huh, Warren Brown of The Washington Post gave the car a very favorable review.
Just buy a Prius. They rock, regardless of what The Times of London (stupid name for a paper, wonder why it gets used so much) says.
If you want a Honda, don't get a hybrid, their CVCC engine technology is nearly as efficient as a hybrid anyway. Go to Toyota for hybrids, there's a reason Ford and Nissan are both licensing Toyota's technology instead of Honda's.
Interesting that as a cyclist and non-motorist, the description of how CVT accelerates makes perfect sense - first you rev up the engine, then you take advantage of the high RPMs to pull the car up to speed.
That's exactly how you accelerate quickly on a bike - shift down, get the pedals and your legs to high RPMs, and then shift up so as to maintain the high RPMs. The alternative is to just pedal really really hard, and it doesn't work well, and if you keep doing it will result in blown kneecaps.
Now, why wouldn't it make sense that that's also the best way to accelerate a car? I seem to remember (rather vaguely - it's been a very long time since I drove) that that's supposed to be how you accelerate quickly in a car too - shift down to a gear lower than you'd normally use at your present speed, so you can quickly get the engine into high RPMs and have more power to deliver to the wheels.
JConli1 - Thanks for the insightful comment, the best so far, by far.
I'd like to add that people who, as I do, get "... great fulfillment from the act of actively driving a car...", should really support cars like this. I'd love to see something like hybrids or hydrogen or whatever take off and change the game for motoring enthusiasts. When gasoline is no longer in high demand because something has replaced it, those of us who love burning the stuff will be free to do so with joyful abandon.
I once saw an observation that the car saved the horse. Prior to the car, horses were ubiquitous, reviled for their stink and other negatives, insufficiently respected by their owners who often regarded them as merely a necessary evil and, as a result, typically subjected to terrible abuse. Then along came cars and no one needed horses any more. Now, horses are owned by those who love them. Better for the horses. Better for the horse lovers.
I'd love for something to come along and replace the internal combustion engine for most uses. That would leave those of us who love our *real* cars to...well...love our cars. Then no one would care that Clarkson drives a Lambo and goes off on rants disparaging lesser cars.
A lot of comments here are pretty clueless about the engineering. My comment will have a bias towards reality, as I did R&D work on CVT's for a major auto manufacturer a few decades ago.
First, they are the most efficient type of automatic transmission - depending on the type of CVT (belt or one of the cone types) you can use. The biggest loss in CVT's is due to oil pump losses, but with the small amount of torque that hybrid engines put out, that is less of a problem.
If you count overall efficiency, a CVT is more efficient than a manual tranny except in the case of a highly trained driver.
Secondly, hybrids use an overall drivetrain/electric/braking management system that pretty much requires a huge amount of intervention between the accelerator pedal and the engine. A CVT is perfectly suited, and in fact is the only logical choice for a hybrid.
These are just a couple of corrections. I could write a book on CVTs. If someone wants more info, let me know.
I don't see how the request to refer to The Times as such and not as The London Times is in any way wrong.
It is not the London Times, it is a national paper, it is also the oldest Times in the world, ans so it is the responsibility of other Times' to differentiate themselves.
If we want to talk about regional solopsism, we need only note that every country in the world suffixes it's national websites, the exception being the USA which decided it was ubiquitous.
Clarkson is a spoilt little brat who never had to grow up. I wouldn't mind him being a total dick were in not for the fact that he is intelligent, and he is a talented broadcaster - shame he's so lazy and likes to waste what he was with cheap lowest common denominator material.
The request to refer to a certain British newspaper as "The Times" is an appropriate request to make of a British person, but it's a bogus request to make of an American. If you tell me that you read a story in The Times, it will be assumed by pretty nearly anyone in the northeastern US, and most other places as well, that you meant The New York Times, unless that city has its own newspaper with a "Times" name, like the Los Angeles Times. It's just going to cause confusion.
In the New York Times, they normally say "The Times of London" to avoid this kind of confusion.
there's plenty of information on the prius CVT all over the internet; i'm not going to repeat it all here. in the prius, the CVT is the mechanism by which the gasoline and electric motors are bound together. it's not there as a convenience to the driver as JConli1 seems to think.
in the case of the insight, because the electric motor is essentially the flywheel of a regular gasoline engine, the CVT is not strictly necessary. but clearly honda thinks they can achieve better fuel economy by using one.
as for "unsafe", i'd say the most "unsafe" thing about the prius is that the traction control software has to avoid letting the drive wheels break loose, because when they finally do grab, all that torque hitting the CVT (which is really called the PSD, because that's what it is, a Power Split Device) can destroy it. this means that sometimes you step on the gas and nothing happens. but that's a rare occurrence - its never happened to me after 75,000 miles and 3 years driving the prius.
and as far as the feeling of driving a prius CVT goes, there's no hesitation... that's all in your mind. because you hear the engine RPM increase without the car suddenly accelerating quickly your brain thinks something is wrong, but in fact the car is accelerating as fast as it can with the engine running at a constant speed.
"but clearly honda thinks they can achieve better fuel economy by using one."
well or maybe not. now that i think about it the original insight also came in a manual transmission model and that one got better fuel economy. so in the case of the insight it might just be for driver convenience. still though, its impossible to build a prius without the CVT. by its very nature the PSD is an 'automatic' transmission.
Oh thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for that link. I absolutely detest CVT. I've test-driven three cars which have it, and every one feels lifeless, dead, and about as quick and handy as hardening cement.
After driving a Dodge Caliber with CVT, I tried one with a manual transmission, and the difference was ASTONISHING. The car was reactive, fun, and an enjoyable drive.
There's no reason that a car can't be simultaneously economical and fun to drive. Sounds like the CVT wrecks otherwise decent cars, which...well, actually, this one sounds like it sucks anyway.
I like a nice, speedy car. However, I can appreciate a smart, well made Civic or the like.
While Clarkson and Boingboing point to the powertrain as the worst part, Clarkson also notes:
and
Before I worry about how fast I can make a car go, I have to feel like it's not going to send me to the chiropractor after nipping out for some groceries.
Italicising "London Times" is unequivocably wrong since it implies that this is the newspaper's name.
However, there's nothing wrong with saying:
the London "Times"
ie only italicising the word "Times". This has 3 advantages:
1. We know which newspaper you're talking about
2. It doesn't incorrectly name the newspaper
3. It doesn't jar within a sentence
#41 - the London 'Times' is wrong really as it isn't a London paper. It's the same as saying: the Washington DC 'USA Today'
'British paper, The Times' or 'UK paper, The Times' is the correct way to say it
Clarkson is a 12 year old with a good turn of phrase in a big, gross, old, hairy body. He has a mouth as loud as 12 people's.
CVT gets you places efficiently and quietly - Honda has perfected it and it is going into all cars. Clarkson is also car 1968.
I just bought a new Honda Fit and I really like it. I tried the Insight and did not like it. It was really uncomfortable and cramped. Plus it only offered a little better city mileage and drive mostly high way.
I think a review that states "CVT gets you from A to B in a simple, energy efficient manner" or something like that, not focusing on the fact it's unspectacular or unusual compared to a traditional gear box is a bad review. It's like a restaurant review that says "this restaurant sells food that imparts nutrition" We know, it's a restaurant, that's what it does.
The car will get you from A to B, rest assured if it exploded halfway there we would be told in great detail. The review element is to evaluate how well it works - how comfortable, how natural etc etc.
Would any of us honestly pay money (for those who hate "dead tree media" just bear with me, you can say no) to read a review that says "this car started, moved off, entered the highway and arrived at my destination"?
#43 - The proper way to refer to USA Today to avoid ambiguity is the Arlington-VA "USA Today."
Everybody knows USA Today's offices aren't in the actual District.
i'm very surprised to see it not mentioned... but transmissions all have a degree of power loss related to friction and elasticity of the transmission system, there is a CVT system for bicycles called nuvinci and the main complaint about them is they have a higher overall friction level and a chain drive is about 92-95% efficient, and a standard planetary gear 3 speed is in the late 80s, the CVT, because it does not use cogs or sprockets relies on metal against metal under high pressure and consequently efficiency is in the low 80s.
i'm sure that someone will eventually make a nanomaterial that pushes the coupling efficiency of CVT systems up to the 90s in the not too distant future, but the big plus about them is that you don't have to totally ease off the torque from the prime mover to change ratios, having said that it has to be eased off somewhat as the aforementioned friction that reduces efficiency increases with torque applied and thus shifting the angle of the transfer mechanism to adjust the ratio does require the reduction of torque for it to happen.
however, in comparing bicycle transmissions to cars, i left out an important fact - car transmissions are already more than 3 cogs between prime mover and the ground, if you think about a car it's something like 5 or 6 gears inside the transmission and then another gear in the differential, each cog entails a loss of transmitted force and i would think a CVT could trump standard transmissions by having individual transmissions directly on the wheels meaning a drive shaft through the centre of the car, one pair of gears shifting power sideways to the wheels and a CVT on each wheel eliminating the need for a differential.
the responsiveness could be fixed by tweaking the upshift mechanism i'm pretty sure.
i wonder how an electric coupling would compare, where the engine charges a large capacitor/array and each wheel has an electric motor to deliver power to the wheels, in terms of efficiency.
1) Clarkson's a character actor. Get over it.
2) It's not terribly surprising that a Brit is wary of a CVT. Automatic transmissions never caught on in the UK or most of mainland Europe for whatever reason, and the people don't seem to care for them.
A CVT feels a bit unnatural even to somebody accustomed to driving an automatic for reasons that have already been explained; making the jump from a manual to a CVT would likely be even more unnerving.
All in all, though, Clarkson has a few points. Why bother with a Hybrid, when you can buy a diesel for much less?
(Other things that never caught on in the UK: Flushing your own urinal. Attempts to install manual flushing devices on urinals in the UK have almost universally failed, and some very humorous pieces of academic literature were produced to attempt to explain why.)
I, of course, say this as a former UK resident, and a person who is a big fan of British culture in general. We all have our own quirks.
There's nothing about CVTs that makes them inherently terrible. They've been used on snowmobiles for quite some time, and that's a high performance application. It's all in the tuning - what ratios it uses at given combination of road speed, engine RPM, and throttle position. Economy cars will have CVTs tuned for - surprise, surprise - economy. But with a computer-controlled CVT there's no reason they couldn't include a "sport" or "performance" mode. Or just map higher torque priority at the end of the pedal range.
Just call it Murdoch's large-format tabloid.
I drive a 2002 Honda Insight CVT and it already includes the "Sport" and "Economy" mode buttons right on the steering wheel like Ernunnos said. If you want to have some fun just keep it in Sport. If you are concerned about your economy, just keep it in that mode. The first generation Insight is definitely fun to drive with the CVT or the manual transmission.