Personally, I'd go for the Fit. Even though the '09 is a "new" model in the US, it's been around a year in Japan. I'd personally wait for the second model year of an entirely new vehicle like the Insight. There's bound to be some kinks to work out. As mentioned above, the Fit is just soooo adaptable and useful for its size. We're currently getting 33-36mpg in mostly city driving. Once you get into that realm, increased mileage doesn't save as much gas/money as it might seem.

In defense of hybrids, though, I've driven a Prius for about a week and got 50mpg in almost every situation. That's a good 50% better mileage than our Fit. The discussion of life-cycle or cradle-to-grave impacts is a valid one, but if you want to talk about battery production and recycling for the hybrids, you have to talk about oil exploration, crude transportation via the dirtiest of diesel-buring oil tankers, energy/pollution associated with refining, and then transportation of the gasoline by pipeline and truck to your local gas station. And that doesn't even touch on the immeasurable amount of $ and resources that gets spent worldwide to continually jockey for access to and protection of oil resources.

I'm not saying hybrids are a great solution, but too often hybrids, plug-ins, and EV's are subjected to life-cycle scrutiny when we rarely talk about the life-cycle cost of traditional cars and their fuel. And ultimately, how do the extra resources that go into hybrids compare to the resources that would otherwise be required without the hybrid system.

 

Some good, valid points. There are really two life cycle impact issues. On one hand, the hybrid has a lower cradle to grave impact regarding fuel used. On the other hand, the hybrid has a much higher cradle to grave impact in production and eventual disposal. I think in the end, there is a shift in impact by owning a hybrid, but not necessarily less impact overall.

I just think the hybrid backers often jump on the bandwagon without giving thought to this subject. There is an assumption that since you drive a Prius or the like, that you are automatically having less negative impact on the planet. I don't think that is necessarily so. Possibly, but not definitively. If a person, instead of forking over $5k more for a hybrid, instead planted $5,000 worth of trees, donated $5,000 to rain forest conservation, etc, they could theoretically have a much greater positive net impact on the planet, and bought a Fit with the remaining money they would have spent on the hybrid.

 

One of my daughter's college classmates commented on the Fit when we drove it down to school; he's a pretty conservative kid, but a major environmentalist. He commented on our 'green' car; I told him it actually burned baby seals, and that they were cheap right now due to the weak fur market...(all right, all right, settle down now, that was a JOKE, fer pete's sake !!)

That said, the OP and the rest of us will have to decide how greeness will affect purchases, and to what degree we will put our money where our mouth is when it comes to the environment.

Our politicos will be making some of those decisions for us; when Algore sez we should be carbon free in 10 years, be either skeptical or very, very afraid.
Moon

 

I think the Insight will cost WAY more than Honda has been saying.

No way it will be cheaper than the Civic. Heck, the fit almost costs as much as a civic.