Honda officials have been telling us for months that they plan to offer as many as three new hybrid vehicles over the next several years, beginning with a five-door hybrid sedan meant to do battle with the Toyota Prius, headed for showrooms in early 2009.
Spy photographers have captured photos of Honda's upcoming Prius-fighter in testing, and it looks like…
A Prius.
Almost exactly like a Prius.
Close enough that Edmunds Inside Line reporters had to ask the photographers how they could tell. "Spy shooters on the scene say the new Honda Hybrid's overall size looks larger than Toyota's popular Prius," according to Edmunds. It was easy for them to make the comparison. "Honda's new prototype was caught running with a Toyota Prius and Honda's redesigned 2009 Civic Hybrid" in the California desert, where automakers routinely test vehicles in Summer.
We should note that automakers routinely disguise prototypes, wrapping them in plastic or cloth and even hiding boxes or wires under the covering to disguise the final vehicle's shape. The Prius-like Honda testing in the desert could look different underneath its black camo. The nose of the car is also likely to change -- the prototype doesn't look bulbous enough to meet the standards of Honda's pedestrian safety program, which designs the front end of cars minimize injuries in a pedestrian accident.
Still, Autoblog comments, "the hatch is an obvious rip on the Prius' aerodynamic rear."
Honda may have good reason to copy the Prius' shape. That teardrop form gives Toyota's popular hybrid a lower coefficient of drag than even many exotic sports cars, which contributes to its fuel-efficiency. The Prius (and, presumably, its new competition) encounters very little wind resistance. Still, Honda's effort at this point looks alarmingly like the thinly-disguised knock-offs some fringe Chinese automakers sell. Perhaps the highly-aerodynamic teardrop is simply the new shape of cars.
The as-yet-unnamed Honda hybrid is expected to debut at the Paris Motor Show in October, when we'll see it unwrapped for the first time.
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