The other day I was discussing with Brian of GotEngines.com that I had a feeling the competition is about to get a little more crowded for the Toyota Prius. Perhaps this week the Honda Motor Company will offer to American consumers what it bills as “the world’s first affordable hybrid.”

2009 Honda Insight Hybrid

Costing just a little bit less than $20,000, the Honda Insight is the first viable alternative to two of the leading problems facing us: the environment aka carbon footprint and the recession.

The Insight could bring an increase in it’s quest for a share of the hybrid market for Honda, which unsuccessfully tried selling hybrids for nearly a decade. In fact, Honda stopped production on a previous Insight model in 2006, believing buyers thought hybrids were too expensive. But when sales of Toyota’s Prius rose as oil prices elevated to $4.00 per gallon, Honda quickly  increased the pace of hybrid technology to compete with Toyota, but giving the consumer a big price break.

Behind the more affordable Insight is an aggressive cost-cutting effort, as well as small, perhaps insignificant technological sacrifices.

Instead of the more complicated hybrid system used in the Prius, the Insight’s main source of power is a tiny and lite weight gasoline engine that is assisted by smaller batteries. That greatly reduces manufacturing costs, but gives the Insight a hair less fuel economy than the Prius … 43 miles per gallon  highway compared with 45 miles per gallon for the Prius. Honda really used their heads by sharing some parts with some other Honda models, this practice helps the car-maker keep costs to a minimum.

Honda used to purchase their batteries from Panasonic and Sanyo, which also makes the Prius battery’s, has also put a lot of money in battery technology has set up a company with a battery maker, Yuasa, to produce lithium-ion batteries. That move came because Honda was reluctant to continue obtaining batteries from the same company as Toyota. The greater capacity of lithiom ion batteries would allow Honda to introduce hybrid versions of its other models.

After talking about this for a while we both agreed that the scenery won’t change very fast. Brian is an advocate of having a green future, and will always strive to offer what ever is in his customers best interest. He also did not deny that he must keep up with the times and be prepared to offer replacement power-plants for hybrid cars as they fail. We both encourage you to read the GotEngines.com Blog to help keep your car running tip top or to pick up some maintenance tips for free.