IMO Honda would not use "old" batteries when remanufacturing the pack. "New" packs, like many other major assemblies (e.g. automatic transmissions) have never been available except remanufactured.
And that's the _beauty_ of using "standard" D cell sizes. Their readily available in the production stream. Yes, the Insight uses an "industrial" quality _heavy duty_ version of a D cell, but such differences can easily be done in a production run vs. some type of custom battery ala Prius.
Nor would using a higher capacity NiMH in substution for a lower have any effect. Except that the battery management system could not take advantage of the increased capacity. So if the case is true the Panasonic no longer manufactures the lower capacity cell their current higher capacity cell will work just fine.
HTH!
