Honda is on a green crusade. The Japanese automaker won enormous publicity with the release of a handful of units of its new hydrogen fuel-cell powered FCX Clarity to customers in Southern California this week. But the Clarity is unlikely to be an option for most buyers for years to come. America lacks a hydrogen fuel infrastructure and each Clarity costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build. The truly significant environmental news from Honda centers on a series of new hybrid-powered cars that will be made available to American consumers over the next several years.
Autoblog reports that Honda has "laid out plans for a number of hybrids that would be priced considerably more aggressively than the Toyota Prius." The first to appear will be Honda's first dedicated hybrid car-- a car with no gasoline-powered counterpart. Autoblog says it will be "a 5-door hatch with unique styling that's based on the Fit, but three inches taller and one inch wider. It will use the Civic Hybrid's Integrated Motor Assist technology and mate that car's 1.3-liter engine with 94 hp to a 15kW electric motor powered by a nickel-metal-hydride battery pack. Fuel economy, according to insider predictions, will be somewhere around 71 - 82 miles per gallon, but that's based on Japanese domestic use. Expect a drop for U.S. comparison." Honda may revive the Insight name for that car.
Honda CEO Takeo Fukui told the Wall Street Journal, "We feel this model will have to overwhelm and overtake Prius. That is key for us."
Auto Observer notes, however, that "Toyota…will respond by producing not one, but three versions of the next Prius, according to sources, including a smaller edition than now, which will hit directly on this new global Honda hybrid as the coming global wars heat up."
Honda also plans to bring a revised Civic hybrid, a hybrid version of the Fit and a planned hybrid sports car based on its CR-Z concept car to the U.S. over the next several years.
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