Honda have confirmed it will go the way of its top competitor Toyota and launch a plug-in hybrid and a battery electric model for the US and Japanese market. Speaking at a news conference in Japan, CEO Takanobu Ito stated the models will be seen sometime in 2012.
They expect the new plug-in hybrid to go slightly more than 60km on a single litre of petrol making it more fuel efficient than the current Prius according to reports from Nikkei. This is of course a sort of grey area as so far we’re can universally only state mileage claims based on a formula that uses a single source of liquid fuel. The results of a hybrid vehicle can go way off especially if its a plug-in.
Along with the Insight, the company is also looking two other hybrid models for the US market expanding its hybrid line up to around five by 2013 according to the Japanese publication. This is quite a sudden turn of events for Honda, as they have previously been against the development of electric cars focusing mainly on hydrogen fuelled variants due to the fact that batteries were too expensive to be practical. Seems that the only reason they will be selling battery run electric cars is to meet US legal requirements in California.
Toyota was on the same bandwagon of EV sceptics, but have now changed their plans with its partnership with Tesla and the development of a prototype electric vehicle based on the Toyota RAV4 and Lexus RX.
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1st!!!!???
Hopefully it will impress others, not like the insight or CR-X
love honda…
Lol, what choices do they have?
Considering America is their niche market.
To be exact, Japan’s car main market.
They certainly can’t go Euro 5 turbo diesel. :-)
ah… finally, H is making a strategic move against T to capture market share and at the same time give mother nature some breathing space. it would be great if our G can also help reduce the excise duties on these hybrid vehicles cause it not only improves the environment, it helps in reducing carbon footprints. Wat say the G? Forget the politics, the cronies etc etc… work with the rakyat to bring abt reasonable affordable hybrid cars so that a decent number of rakyat can help ourselves, the country and environment overall. we are not sepang kaki, no need huge 800 to 1000 bhp cars, just decent affordable hybrid cars, say in the region of 90K to 100K
agreed !!. i think prius for example will be selling like hot cake if the price is around rm100k considering the fuel price will increase constantly in the next 5 years. this is a win win situation la. the G can cut the fuel subsidy and the rakyat can enjoy affordable hybrid cars. but if the G is stupid enough to consider such idea, toyota can help a lil bit by starting to manufacture the prius in thailand so we can enjoy the AFTA.
save petrol money but when battery die you think will be cheap to replace?
Plug in hybrid – how does that work? It will need charging stations, rite? Am just about to put my name down for a camry hybrid in coffs harbour. Will give my 1000km opinion when i get there!!!
This whole hybrid electricity car thing makes no sense. From what I read, we don’t even have enough of these material on planet earth for all the cars in the world.
Further more, electricity car still draws power from a power station or house that draws the electricity from a power station powered by oil/gas/petrol/coal… whereas a minority of them are nuclear and hydro.
Instead of having a mini power plant producing CO2 from the car, we’re simply shifting it to a bigger powerplant. Unless it is powered by Solar Panels, which again requires lots and lots of energy (CO2) to make these panels.
What happened to the car powered by compressed H20?
CO2 + Energy???
Compress H2O???
H2O is water, how to compress water?
you know! the one launched with great fanfare by Pak Tidur Lah. the pickup truck that splits water into fuel! what happened to that our friend is asking bah!
u can see how G is shafting us. In australia, G gave funding for toyota to buid the camry hybrid. OTR for $39000 depending on how well your bargaining skills are. And 2.9% finance too…
When this model will launch in Malaysia
http://www.carmiddleeast.com/article-1-2079-2012_honda_civic_exposed