New Suzuki Baleno
 

Sounds like an interesting little car, not a full hybrid, but a "mild hybrid" similar to my little insight, very similar how the system operates. And priced well too, the hybrid starts from £12500.

Suzuki Baleno 2016 Road Test | Road Tests | Honest John

Honda's IMA created the assist class for hybrids. There is no real hard rules on what defines an assist beyond that it sits between the mild and full ones in terms of the electric side's power.

Your Insight's electric motor has over four times the power output of the Baleno's.

Suzuki gave up on the US market a few years ago, so we won't be seeing any Baleno here. We should finally get the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV this fall though.

That's not a bad looking car although the interior materials could do with a bit of an upgrade. Still, for $18-19k U.S. dollars it seems like a good value.

Why aren't hybrid assists more popular on the market? They're cheaper, less complicated, take up less space and weigh less than a full hybrid too. I'm surprised there are so few on the market, especially when you consider that they can easily operate with a manual box, something that puts a lot of people off buying hybrids is the fact they have auto boxes. Maybe its just the fact that people who want a petrol/diesel car want exactly that, and people who want a hybrid want a full hybrid. An assist kind of sits on the fence between the two. I'm looking forward to more models like this, Renault are working on a New Megane diesel hybrid assist too. These would reach a wider audience than a plug in or full electric car in my opinion.

I don't have any clue why more people aren't interested. It baffles me every time I read my mileage, especially when I'm driving far enough to allow it to really do it's thing.

Despite going to look at a Hybrid Honda Jazz (which they didn't have), I was far more interested in Toyota hybrids. This was because I read the Toyota use EV, while the Honda is IMA only, no EV at all.
When I compared some Hybrid Yaris models against Hybrid Jazz models on Fuelly, the Toyotas seemed to bear this out with overall higher hybrid MPGs.
For pure fun - charging on petrol and braking, and trying to maximise the EV portions of your route, I'd imagine the Toyota system is going to be hard to beat. It looks like the Prius has IMA too, as under certain circumstances you see the electric motor and petrol motor both powering the wheels.
And I've just clocked 66 mpg as your first Insight tankful - well done Paul, a very respectable opening score!
I am expecting about the same the next time I fill up.

Back to the manual/auto debate, if you haven't yet driven a CVT, I'd suggest test driving one. I had only bad things to say about autos for 15 years (without ever having driven one!). Loved manuals for economy, driving experience etc - all the things I thought autos lacked.
As it turns out, I love the CVT auto transmission!

Yes thanks Ben, quite impressed with the insight given that most of that first fuel up was popping about town, only a few longer journeys. I'm never going to get great economy living where I live, in a valley surrounded by steep mountains, each and every journey I take consists of a cold engine going up a steep hill! It's worse when you have no battery boost too!

Getting back to the Baleno, I guess these mild hybrids have been ignored a while, since diesels have been so popular and offer similar performance and economy too, and despite diesels being slightly more expensive, I'm sure they'd be cheaper than the mild hybrid system. I guess now with "local air quality issues" and the future fuel being electric, more of these mild hybrids will be popping up.

I can sympathize - the 3 years before last October I also lived in the dip at the bottom of a valley - 3 out of 4 exits were immediately steep hills (the steepest two our route to work!). Now I have 4 miles of flat before I start hitting the uphill slopes. Didn't make as big a difference with the Hyundai as I expected though, when we moved.
I guess there are a lot of people who make short car journeys, where a diesel would be plagued by dpf regen issues, that a mild hybrid would be the perfect choice for best economy.

Japan and North America are the biggest hybrid markets. Not being able to get a hybrid with a manual isn't a minus, and can be a plus.

Honda's new one motor system is a full hybrid; they bumped up the power output of the motor for full EV operation.

In the early days of hybrids, many wanted a full hybrid. On top of that, Honda's aren't cheap. The Civic hybrid started at the same price as the gen2 Prius here. A sedan with less cargo space and no fold down rear seats that got lower MPG than the Prius hatchback.

Then there was the early battery failures, and Honda's handling of that mess.

The issue for other mild and assist hybrids has been cost. The first gen BAS on the Chevy Malibu was nearly $2000 for very little improvement. The second gen eAssist likely improved on cost, but it was dropped from the Malibu when a new engine with just start/stop got the same EPA numbers. The new Malibu has a full hybrid option.

We'll see mild hybrids come back though, for rising fuel economy numbers. GM is offering eAssist on pick ups in California under a market test. The system is only $500 to $700 now. Then Continental and another auto part supplier have a 48v mild hybrid system they want to sell. I haven't seen anything on its actual cost.

Just found out about the Volvo V60 D5 SE Nav Twin Engine. A diesel hybrid plug in, been chatting with a couple of people from Volvo on LinkedIn. Not cheap at £38,000, but maybe a government grant of £2,500 plus some other discounts.

Yes there are lots of plug ins flooding the market now. I'm not so keen on plug ins to be honest, it just seems like you have to keep panic charging the thing as much as you can to fool yourself your getting good fuel economy. Most of them can only do about 20 miles real world on a charge, after than, it's just a regular petrol car with poor MPG. I think green car tested the Volvo and got less than 30 MPG in it. If you cared about fuel economy that much and wanted to save money, you wouldn't be spending that much to start with.

We don't have the Prius plug in here in Texas. I think it's pretty similar to mine except for the plug in function and going 15-20 miles all electric vs. 1-1.x miles electric. Outside those ranges I think it's similar good mileage to mine on gasoline. I wonder if that Volvo will eventually come here.

The Volvo is a diesel, not petrol, they are reporting 72-74mpg - but as it is a demonstrator they are holding back using the battery, to show it to clients with it mostly charged.
If I could get guaranteed better mpg but higher pence per mile through super unleaded, I think I would!
And yes, if it was all about saving money, I would have paid off and put up with the i20.
Switching to the Prius not only added that higher cost, but wrote off £9,000 paid on the Hyundai, ouch!
I guess I want a nice car, but with better than average mpg. I think the Prius price tag was my upper limit, hence no Outlander PHEV or diesel hybrid.
The Prius test drive found me liking it far more than I'd have thought. I still take it out just to enjoy the drive.
It would again to be cheaper to keep buying older £400 - £800 cars and replacing them every year or two, and not even care a great deal about their economy, compared to buying even a very efficient new car bigger than a supermini.
This is what I did for more than a dozen cars before the incredibly unreliable Rover 75 put me off for good!
How is the Insight doing?
I see a lot of older Priuses, but still just the two Gen 4 ones, maybe August is when they'll all be delivered. When we bypassed the Yaris and went straight for the Prius my first thought was plug in, but they either didn't have (or weren't interested in selling) any of the outgoing model.

Oh sorry, you're talking about the V60, I thought you were talking about the new suv plug in they had. Yea Next Green Car tested that too, can't quite believe the hybrid is a shocking £15,000 more than the standard diesel and gets worse mpg too. After 500 miles they only averaged 41.3 MPG, and less than 40 MPG driving in diesel only mode. They also only got about 10 miles on electric. Utterly pointless set up if you ask me.

They have offered me a two day test drive of it, but as the missus is next up for a new car, and she's not interested in it, and we can't afford it, not a great idea! As I'd need to fill it up twice and drive a few hundred miles to get à meaningful result, an expensive way to satisfy a little curiosity....

The US will be getting the V90 PHEV from Volvo.

The Prius plug in was only available in 14 states, and probably fewer European countries. Toyota stopped manufacturing it last year. The unveiled a prototype of the Prius Prime recently. It has a 20 mile EV range, and should come out in the fall.

Interesting Draigflag! I'll be keeping an eye on this one when it comes on the European market. Like you say above I think it's a great idea to combine the manual gearbox with simple, lightweight and cheap hybrid system. It may not achieve as high mpgs as a full hybrid, but the energy and resources required to produce the 12V battery for this system is certainly much less than for the big full hybrid batteries.
Are you sure the Honda Jazz Hybrid is still on the market? I recently had a look at the Honda website here in Switzerland and it's not there anymore. It may have been discontinued.

There's already some at my local Suzuki garage, not sure if its the hybrid, I don't think its out yet. Its not a bad looking car actually, looks better in real life than in pictures. The one I saw was bright red with chrome trim, looked smart.

The Jazz Hybrid was discontinued a few years ago, i looked at getting one in march. I like the light green colour and very clever folding rear seats. Was due to test drive one, but the dealer never called me back. I'd bought the Prius 15 minutes after, but they didnt know that!

There is a new Jazz hybrid, but I don't think it has left Japan yet.

There's a video on Youtube describing how the Suzuki SHVS system works.
https://youtu.be/2SswlsyuXb4
Seems like a simple, clever idea. I'll definitely be looking out for the real mpgs on this one when it's been around for a while.

What a great video, explains the system really well. I see they use the same system on the diesel engines in India, its a shame they don't do that here, as the diesel would already be way more efficient. It works identically to the system on my Honda.

I've only read one review of the Baleno hybrid, they pretty much said what I expected, that with careful driving, you might see 60 MPG, but they are never as good on fuel as you expect them to be, especially considering its a mild hybrid.

That was interesting. They made it look very good.

The benefit of a mild hybrid is that it adds little weight, cost and takes up little space, so can easily be fitted to other cars too. Suzuki are adding the same system to the new ignis too, quite like it's funky shape.

Suzuki Ignis set for Paris launch | Next Green Car

So I was looking at the stats for the hybrid Baleno V's the standard 1 litre turbo, and it doesn't look good. The hybrid has an engine 20% larger but it's down on power by 20%, and torque is a staggering 30% lower, meaning the 0-60 time is slower too by about 10%. Emissions are also higher on the hybrid by 20% meaning 1 years road tax is the same as 5 years worth on the non hybrid. Fuel figures are similar, slightly higher on the hybrid, but in the real world they are probably closer.

So you're better off all round with the little 1.0 litre turbo, which is a shame because I really like the idea of a low cost mild hybrid.