Are you longing to drive a hybrid vehicle but only have enough cash for a $12,000 car? Well, your wish may no longer be light years away! Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a Japanese business daily, revealed last Wednesday the plans of Honda Motor Co. to develop a hybrid version of the Honda Fit. According to the report, the Honda Fit hybrid would start selling as early as 2007. Honda executives, however, declined to confirm the report.
The Honda Fit is a new entry-level compact car that the Japanese auto manufacturing company has recently introduced in the 2006 North American International Auto Show. The vehicle is actually a North American version of the Honda Jazz, a best-selling vehicle model being sold by the company in most of their Asian and European markets. When the vehicle goes on sale this year, it will be equipped with a standard 109-hp, 1.5-liter VTEC four-cylinder engine mated with either a five-speed manual or five-speed automatic transmission.
Now, based on the hybrid versions of the Honda Civic and Accord, Honda adds a premium of about 300, 000 yen ($2,525) for its hybrid vehicles. By using a smaller motor and battery, however, Nihon Keizai reported that the premium for the Fit will be reduced to about 200,000 yen ($1,600). This means that the new Honda Fit hybrid, if sold, would only sell around $11,790*! Well that’s definitely a lot more affordable than the hybrids being sold today!
At a price below $12,000 and with a fuel economy of some 50 mpg, the envisioned Honda Fit hybrid would definitely be a true value car. But just as Honda still won’t verify the reports, we can do nothing but wait and hope that the Japanese auto manufacturer would eventually confirm the said new… or wait for the vehicle to be introduced in next year’s major auto shows.
*Price estimate based on the cost of Honda Fit (or Jazz) in Japan. North American prices are expected to be a higher.
February 24th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
That is a nice price. It’s in the price range where the people who are considering it will be influenced by the gas savings as well. I was reading Purpl Cow (a marketing book) and Seth Godin said that hybrid cars would have been better marketed at the high end because people with money want to make a sttement with their cars. A 20-30 thousand dollar car doesn’t make much of a statement while a 60-70 thousand dollar car would.
June 20th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Agree, the hybrid automobiles have good qualities already development, incorporated at a level. Certainly, in concrete extreme situations it is better to apply concrete types of automobiles, but the hybrid automobiles are maximum universal.