Honda Australia is about to embark on a campaign to greatly increase the number of hybrid vehicles it offers in our country. The Civic has been quietly simmering in the background for several years, now a new version of the Honda Insight has joined it.

Insight was the name given to the first ever petrol-electric hybrid car to go on sale in Australia. That vehicle, launched to a startled public in 2001, was very much an engineering special. Designed to showcase Honda’s long standing reputation for being conscious of the environment, that Insight had unusual aerodynamic lines owing more to the wind tunnel than the stylist’s pen.

New Insight for 2011 was also shaped in the wind tunnel, but a being visually pleasing was also part of the design brief. The shape is also a foretaste of another model, the Honda CR-Z, a sporting hybrid.

New Honda Insight is a practical five-door hatchback with room for four adults, it has a voluminous boot as the battery and other hybrid components have been scaled down in size compared with previous Honda hybrids. Insight can easily be used as a family car.

Though aimed at city driving, where a hybrid makes the most sense, it is capable enough on the open road as we found out during our road test in Queensland’s Gold Coast and in the hills behind Brisbane.

Performance off the line is quite lively but to overtake quickly it needs full throttle for quite a while. Fuel consumption during our initial 250 km review worked out at 6.1 litres per hundred kilometres, which is about right for a car driven in a normal manner with no real attention paid to getting the best from it.

Honda is well aware that the biggest factor in lower fuel consumption is drivers’ style and attitude, so installed various ways of telling the driver how well they are doing in the economy stakes. These include the surround of the digital speedo that changes colour according to economy, or otherwise, of the driving from moment to moment.

There’s even a cute little computer generated plant with leaves and a flower atop it that senses you’re doing everything right in the way of driving for the environment. This may seem a bit much to Australians, but the Japanese love that sort of thing and insightful Australian owners may well fall for the fascinating challenge.

Honda Insight uses what the company calls integrated motor assist. This is a relatively simple form of hybrid drive that uses an electric motor between a 1.3-litre petrol engine and the CVT (continuously variable transmission).

Other than the different powertrain sound created by the use of the continuously variable transmission, the new Honda Insight sounds and feels much like any other car. Road holding and comfort are good, though not exactly in a sporting manner as economy tyres are used. We did feel there was too much road noise on coarse-chip surfaces, but on smooth roads the Insight is quieter than average.

The aim is to keep the price of the vehicle down while reducing fuel use and emissions, rather than to go all out for a pure economy machine. Thus the $29,990 Insight VTi hybrid costs about $10,000 less than the Toyota Prius and Honda Australia calculates its car uses 37 per cent less petrol than the average vehicle in this class. While the Toyota is rated at 3.9 litres per hundred kilometres, the Honda comes in at 4.6 litres per hundred. These figures are when the vehicles are tested to Australian Design Rule 81:02.