Honda to revive the Insight as a Prius-fighter

The Insight Concept represent's Honda's next attempt to dethrone the Toyota Prius.
(Credit: Honda)

• Honda introduced the first gas-electric hybrid for purchase with the Insight in 1999, then came Toyota's Prius and everyone forgot about Honda's little hybrid that could. We all knew that Honda was working on a larger Prius-fighting, dedicated hybrid vehicle, but Honda has denied that they'd be reviving the Insight moniker for this new vehicle. On Thursday, Honda released the first official information and images of their Prius-killer concept and it's called, you guessed it, the Insight.
• The Insight Concept carries over the styling cues of Honda's fuel cell vehicle, the FCX Clarity. It looks to us that Honda has been taking lessons from the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" school of thought, as the five-door, five-passenger hatchback configuration of the Insight is the same as that of the Prius. Squint your eyes and you'll see that the proportions from the a-pillar back are decidedly Prius-like. It's almost as though someone slapped the nose of the FCX Clarity onto Toyota's hybrid and called it a day.
• Originally posted at The Car Tech blog

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Crave.com

Assystem shows off its vision of the City Car

• One of the more inventive concept vehicles on display at this year's Geneva auto show is the City Car from the unfortunately named Assystem, which touts the project as a way of exploring "different thought strategies on the future of the city car." The most obvious of these strategies from the outside is the layout of the car's wheels in a diamond formation--a principle that has been patented by Franco Sbarro, Assystem's partner on the project. The car's doors open upward in gullwing-style, not just to show that it is a concept car, but to allow the greatest access with the minimum footprint area.(Credit: CNET Networks)
• It is inside, however, that the City Car really gets our attention. In place of a windshield, the City Car has an LCD display, which can apparently be rendered transparent for regular driving (we're not sure how) or turned into a monitor showing camera footage of the road ahead in difficult driving conditions or at night. To help with night driving, the City Car also has an infrared camera. In the latter mode, the system relies on four external cameras that reproduce real-time imagery of the road, onto which is then projected information on key road markers and obstacles, such as traffic lights and pedestrians. According to its designers, the screen can also be connected to the City Car's onboard GPS navigation system to give drivers an "augmented reality" view of the road ahead, complete with turn arrows projected onto real objects.
• Assystem also suggests that the City Car can identify specific road signs such as those for speed limits and one-way streets, and give a warning notice if the driver's behavior is contravening them. To complete the futuristic vision, the City Car's designers envisage an iris-recognition system for turning the vehicle on and for detecting when the driver becomes tired. If all this sounds too good to be true, it very probably is--when we first asked for a demonstration of the system, the Assystem rep was having trouble even turning the screen on. Not quite ready for prime time, but an interesting view of the future all the same.
• Click here for our coverage of the 2008 Geneva auto show.

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Kevin Massy, Crave.com

Photos: 2008 Infiniti EX35

Click on the image to view the full gallery.
(Credit: CNET Networks)

Japanese car makers continue to keep us in work here at CNET car tech. Just when you thought that today's models had as much gadgetry onboard as possible, along comes Infiniti with its 2008 EX35, a model that introduces two brand new car technology features. The EX35 is the first production car to come with Around View Monitor, a camera-based parking aid that gives drivers a top-down surround view of the car and any obstacles in its vicinity. It is also the first car in the United States to come with a nonemergency active safety feature in the form of its Lane Departure Prevention (LDP) system, which builds on the Lane Depature Warning (LDW) of earlier Infiniti models by using a combination of cameras and ABS inputs to keep drivers in their lane on the freeway. The EX35 also comes with a barrage of entertainment tech and a paint job that apparently heals itself from scratches. Oh, and it packs some pretty peppy performance credentials, too. Check out our photos of the crossover space-age tech mobile here.


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