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You are correct, sir: no "EV mode" in your Insight. (Well, not without some trickery, and modification... apparently it can be done, but it's not pretty.)
The motor was designed by Honda only to assist the gas engine. (And provide other functions: regen, charging, engine starting.)
Seeing increasing state of charge on the battery-o-meter as you drive is normal. The car will "background charge" the pack without illuminating any charging bars on the "CHRG / ASST" gauge.
What about lean burn - have you been able to tell whether that's working OK?
At cruise, you can tell when the car goes into lean burn because the instant MPG display will show a significant jump (eg. from 50-70 mpg up to 90-100+ MPG), the engine may hiccup very slightly (depending on how well things are tuned, possibly more than a hiccup), and your speed may begin to drop very slowy if you don't adjust the throttle a little bit to compensate. At cruise, the car will also occasionally drop out of lean burn (every couple of minutes, roughly) momentarily to catalyze stored NOX.
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