My environmentally friendly new car

Honda Insight

I am not really a big car fan, but my company car was well overdue to be replaced and after some consideration I decided to go green and choose a Hybrid electric/petrol car. The model I chose is a Honda Insight. which looks quite stylish (an important consideration for the female members of my family). It was delivered yesterday and I must say that my first impression are that it was a good choice - it is a pleasure to drive and it comes with lots of cool accessories that I have not yet had time to fully explore (e.g. a Bluetooth hands free speaker system for my phone and a USB connection to connect my music player with the car's entertainment system).

I am not certain that Hybrid vehicles really are that much more environmentally friendly than a conventional car since all of the power ultimately comes from the petrol engine, but pure electric vehicles are not yet widely available in Ireland and even if they were there would be concerns about the availability of charging stations.

It is a pity that Ford doesn't offer it's Sync platform in Europe, because I would have been very tempted to choose a Ford vehicle if they did. They have announced that they will begin selling both Hybrid and fully electric vehicles in 2011, but as in the software industry there is a significant lag between an announcement and the product being available for sale.