Honda's new "i-DCD" hybrid system: bye-bye "IMA", hello Prius competition (finally!)
 

Honda is finally (yay, finally!) ditching its IMA (Integrated Motor Assist) hybrid system and coming out with several new versions that should siginficantly improve efficiency AND finally challenge Toyota's dominance of the hybrid segment.

Green Car Reports posted today about driving a development version of Honda's new "small car" hybrid system (they're also developing different hybrid systems for bigger vehicles). They drove a Fit mule fitted with it.

Main features:

• single motor
• 7-speed dual-clutch automated transmission, with "a very wide gear-ratio span"
• which means: better acceleration, sharper throttle response, and "normal" gear change experience
• the engine can be de-coupled from the transmission while under way, meaning:
• (1) this new system is a "full" hybrid - capable of "EV mode" since the e-motor can drive the gearbox/wheels while the engine (ICE) is completely shut down
• (2) this de-coupling means "pure" coasting/freewheeling is available
• 30 percent better MPG compared to Honda's existing IMA hybrid system

I think Honda is being very shrewd with its choice of using the dual-clutch 7-spd automatic, even if the engineers know it's probably not the most efficient approach.

Why? Because mainstream auto journalists generaly HATE the CVT driving experience and always whine about it. I predict that based mainly on this, Honda is going to start overwhelmingly winning the "magazine shootout" comparisons against Toyota. Good marketing move.

I also think Honda underestimated the quiet appeal of "EV mode" driving to hybrid owners (even if most owners don't know how to use it to best effect to improve MPG). They lost sales to Toyota as a result. This fixes that.

More details:

Honda Details Future Small-Car Hybrid System; We Drive It

This is great news. IMA just wasn't enough to really compete. I hope they can give other makers a run for their money in the hybrid market now (and sell more than a couple hundred a month).

Yeah, Honda's IMA sales have been DISMAL!

If I'm not making this up, some months they've been selling fewer Insights than Nissan has been selling Leafs. CRZ sales have been even worse.

I hope focus isn't shifting away from hydrogen. But, this does seems pomising.

Oh and the "i-DCD" stands for "intelligent dual clutch drive".

This is a pretty cool solution! I don't think anyone else uses it right?
What I'd love to see is a sequential manual box with automated engine decoupling, but that will never happen :/

And come on, CVTs are not the greatest thing ever. They have poor range of gear ratios, more parasitic loss, and higher weight.

Incredibly stupid, if you ask me, to give up on the only driveable hybrid system in favor of a copy of the badly-designed Toyota. Guess I'll be driving my Insight for a long, long time.

How in the world is this a copy of the Toyota system? The Toyota system has a power split transmission, this has a normal transmission. All they've done is add an extra clutch (and some more gears).

Agreed 100%, if by "incredibly stupid" you mean "likely to sell in significant numbers". :D

Yes! You, me, and the eleven other people who bought one!

OK, what I meant was that it's copying the BEHAVIOR of the Toyota system: it's an automatic and has the inefficient electric-only mode.

As for why Honda doesn't sell more, I think that has more to do with the fact that they didn't manage to create a dedicated image brand like the Prius. Even the other day, my neighbor was asking me how my "Prius" was holding up. (It's a 1st-gen Insight, which I've only had for about 8 years now.)