By Agence France-Presse
CHIBA, Japan–Japan’s Honda Motor Co. plans to release a more affordable hybrid car by 2009, hoping to boost sales among consumers who now find eco-friendly vehicles too expensive.
Japanese automakers pioneered hybrid-engine cars such as Honda’s Civic Hybrid, which save fuel costs and have proven to be major hits at a time of soaring oil prices.
Honda showed to the Tokyo Motor Show the CR-Z concept car, a lightweight sports model with a hybrid engine.
“Honda plans to release a new hybrid vehicle in 2009 that is more affordable than the Civic Hybrid,” Takeo Fukui, president of Japan’s second largest automaker, told reporters at the industry show held in Tokyo’s outskirts.
“In addition to that model, we are continuing development so that we will be able to release to the market a vehicle based on the CR-Z concept,” Fukui said.
The Nikkei business daily, quoting unnamed company sources, said that Honda would release the lower-priced hybrid in 2009 across the world, including Japan, the United States, Europe and China.
With the new model, Honda hopes to raise global hybrid sales 10 times from last year’s figure, reaching up to 500,000 cars by 2010, the newspaper said.
The Nikkei said Honda aimed for the hybrid to cost about 200,000 yen ($1,800) less than a conventional car.
The price gap now stands at about 500,000 yen, meaning that many people buying hybrids are either ideologically motivated or drive frequently enough to feel the savings in petrol costs.
A Honda spokeswoman said that nothing concrete had been decided.
“We have said in general terms that we’re going to launch a hybrid at a lower price. But we haven’t set specific goals such as a production target or sales plan,” she said.
Honda has also spearheaded research into fuel cells, which produce electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, leaving water as the only by-product.
Fukui had said ahead of the auto show that fuel-cell vehicles, now considered too expensive, could be mass produced within a decade.
“I would say there’s no future for the auto industry without fuel cell cars,” Fukui said on Tuesday.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:11 am
if they could make the technology affordable, we could end our dependency on foreign oil.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Dude - I’m not sure the fuel cell is the answer. Have you watched “Crude Awakening”? They talk about fuel cells there and how we need 50 to 75 years of solid innovation - funded at levels unthinkable today - to make this work. That just makes me think there is an easier way, perhaps.
May 31st, 2008 at 11:09 am
I hope we get fuel cell cars soon. Thank goodness the japanese are exploring them. If we waited for Detroit, we would never see them!
April 18th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Surprised to read about the fuel cell cars.
Hope we could get it soon.
Kudos to Honda!