On the highway one has to get used to the perception that the engine is lugging. It seems as if it needs to be downshifted into a lower gear most of the time. In fact it can be left in the higher gear as suggested by the upshift light as the electric motor adds torque as needed.
Insight handles quite nicely with a good ride for a small car. It has really skinny low-rolling resistance tires that make it look under-tired. Narrow tires don't offer the grip of wider tires, but a car as light as Insight doesn't need a lot of grip, and we had no complaints about how it cornered. You do feel and hear all the bumps on rough roads. The steering feels solid with some road feel and is not over assisted. The manual gearshift is smooth.
The optional continuously variable transmission drives like a conventional automatic, while providing a theoretically infinite number of "gear" ratios to optimize engine performance and efficiency. It retains the stop-idle feature of the manual-transmission model. EPA-estimated fuel economy suffers a little, dropping from the manual Insight's 60/66 city/highway rating to 57/56. In this way the automatic Insight is more comparable to the automatic-only Toyota Prius, at 60/51 city/highway mpg. Next Page