Insight going away soon
For consumers, the big news out of the plans announced by Honda Motor Co., Ltd recently for new assembly plants is the arrival in 2009 of a hybrid car that will be priced low enough so that the people who buy it might actually save money.
As a result, the two-seat Insight hybrid will disappear soon, though its numbers are so small not many people will care.
There will probably also be some interest in a Honda vehicle with a four-cylinder diesel engine, and that should happen in the next three years, with a diesel V-6 to follow.
These developments could be important for Honda Canada, which is having a very bad sales year, especially when measured against the success of its rivals from Japan and Korea. Overall sales for the Toronto-based arm of Honda North America are down to 43,876 models for the first quarter of 2006, from 44,650 for the same period in 2005. That resulted in a loss of market share, down to 9.0 from 9.1 when Toyota and other Asian firms were growing theirs.
The big sales collapse has come on the upscale Acura side of the business (down to 5,311 units from 6,487 last year, which is an 18.1 percent decrease.
Sales of the company's Honda models are up 1.1 percent year-to-date, but that's a remarkably low growth figure when you consider that the company has just added the low-cost, sub-compact Fit to its lineup and is also offering a completely revised Civic line. Considerable growth had been expected as a result of those changes.
To date, the hybrids on the market in Canada have carried premiums large enough to offset any savings in reduced fuel consumption. That will change with the introduction of the Saturn Vue Green Line hybrid later this year, and it's expected that other companies will soon enough follow GM's example.
Honda plans to sell 200,000 units of this purpose-built (i.e. there will not be a gas-powered version as well) hybrid model with a "major price reduction" around the world, with 100,000 North Americans (about 9,000 of them Canadians) paying less than they would for a Honda Civic hybrid at the same time.
No details are available on the new hybrid, but Honda president and CEO Takeo Fukui says it will "achieve further advancement of fuel efficient technologies" and be built at the firm's Suzuka factory in Japan.
As for the possibility of a Honda or Acura model with a diesel engine in the Canadian market, Fukui made no definitive comments but did say that the four-cylinder based on the current European diesel "will meet the U.S. EPA's stringent Tier2 BIN5 emission standard requiring NOx emission levels equivalent to a gasoline-powered vehicle."
Beyond that, says Fukui, will come improved fuel economy through "Advanced VTEC, Advanced VCM, and other technologies," and an expanded use of hybrid technology in smaller vehicles and diesel technology for medium-to-large size vehicles.
For consumers, the big news out of the plans announced by Honda Motor Co., Ltd recently for new assembly plants is the arrival in 2009 of a hybrid car that will be priced low enough so that the people who buy it might actually save money.
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| 2006 Honda Insight (Photo: Honda) |
There will probably also be some interest in a Honda vehicle with a four-cylinder diesel engine, and that should happen in the next three years, with a diesel V-6 to follow.
These developments could be important for Honda Canada, which is having a very bad sales year, especially when measured against the success of its rivals from Japan and Korea. Overall sales for the Toronto-based arm of Honda North America are down to 43,876 models for the first quarter of 2006, from 44,650 for the same period in 2005. That resulted in a loss of market share, down to 9.0 from 9.1 when Toyota and other Asian firms were growing theirs.
The big sales collapse has come on the upscale Acura side of the business (down to 5,311 units from 6,487 last year, which is an 18.1 percent decrease.
Sales of the company's Honda models are up 1.1 percent year-to-date, but that's a remarkably low growth figure when you consider that the company has just added the low-cost, sub-compact Fit to its lineup and is also offering a completely revised Civic line. Considerable growth had been expected as a result of those changes.
To date, the hybrids on the market in Canada have carried premiums large enough to offset any savings in reduced fuel consumption. That will change with the introduction of the Saturn Vue Green Line hybrid later this year, and it's expected that other companies will soon enough follow GM's example.
Honda plans to sell 200,000 units of this purpose-built (i.e. there will not be a gas-powered version as well) hybrid model with a "major price reduction" around the world, with 100,000 North Americans (about 9,000 of them Canadians) paying less than they would for a Honda Civic hybrid at the same time.
No details are available on the new hybrid, but Honda president and CEO Takeo Fukui says it will "achieve further advancement of fuel efficient technologies" and be built at the firm's Suzuka factory in Japan.
As for the possibility of a Honda or Acura model with a diesel engine in the Canadian market, Fukui made no definitive comments but did say that the four-cylinder based on the current European diesel "will meet the U.S. EPA's stringent Tier2 BIN5 emission standard requiring NOx emission levels equivalent to a gasoline-powered vehicle."
Beyond that, says Fukui, will come improved fuel economy through "Advanced VTEC, Advanced VCM, and other technologies," and an expanded use of hybrid technology in smaller vehicles and diesel technology for medium-to-large size vehicles.