I looked at at Niro before deciding on the Insight...trunk space wasn't worth it and it didn't look like much storage compared to a sedan... Insight needs more power... it is sluggish even in sPoRt mode. Electric torque should be priority and bigger battery would certainly help the car. Get at least a 5KW battery in the rear and you'll have way more torque... should be a sub 5 second car... well that might take 10kw from the battery... Engine and battery probably couldn't delivery enough power to get sub 5 second with the current engine/transmission design. I still love my car..just wish it was quicker...After driving a model 3 its quite apparent why people love Tesla so much...
My wife saw a Kia Niro hybrid on the road the other day and she asked me what car it was. She liked how it looked. I told her there's an electric version too.
The question about the Insight doing 0-60 in sub 5 sec got me really thinking.... Sorry but my mind started rambling on.. hope this does make some sense.
My model 3 Long Range single motor (it's one of the slow Tesla's) is a 4.9 sec car (sub 5 second) and through OBD tool and scan my Tesla app, the car pulls 276 kw (370 hp) to make that 4.9 sec. Here's a screenshot of the car being floored.
It's been a long long time since I've taken mechanics...
P=Fd/t = ma*v where a (average acceleration) and v (velocity) are constant. Recall that F=ma and v=d/t.
For 0-60 mph per unit time. If "a" and "v" are constant, then P (power) is proportional to the mass. Model 3 weighs 4000 lb, and Insight is 3000 lb. So if the Model 3 needs 370 hp then Insight would need 3/4 of that as weight to power are proportional. 370 hp *3/4=277 hp for the Insight. I also put the power mass and time into the carspecs Edmunds calculator so my 277 hp checks out.
The Insight is 151 max combined hp, so to make that 0-60 of 5.0 sec, then an extra 126 hp (94 kw) is needed.
5 kWh battery is a unit of energy, not power. So let's see how how long a 5kWh battery can sustain a 94 kW discharge, the additional power to make that sub 5 second run.
5 kW-h / 94 kW * (3600 s/h) = 191 s = 3 minutes 11 secs. Since this is greater than 5 secs the battery does have the capacity to discharge that power.
Although the battery theoretically has enough energy to discharge 94 kW for more than 5 secs, will the battery catch fire and blow up while doing so? That's something I have no experience with.
Certainly the Insight would need a much larger inverter to provide that extra 94 kW boost.
The torque and acceleration of the Tesla is addicting. I only drove it 2 miles today but I floored it at least 6-8 times and it's one of the slow ones.
