With Toyota boasting the world’s most popular green car, the Toyota Prius, and Nissan announcing it will mass produce electric cars by 2012, its now the turn of a third Japanese manufacturer to steal the spotlight in the green car race.
Honda, which has already enjoyed success in the fuel-efficient car sector with models including the Honda Civic hybrid, has now announced plans to spend $1.5billion on two new plants as it steps up production of green cars.
One plant will be dedicated to building fuel-efficient engines and will be built in 2009, while the other will be a manufacturing plant to be built in 2010 – both will be located in Japan.
It’s just the latest commitment from Honda to green car projects – the manufacturer has already confirmed that it is on track to introduce an ‘affordable hybrid’ to the market in early 2009. The company also plans to introduce a hybrid version of its Fit compact car and a new petrol-electric version of the Civic.
Honda also hopes to make hybrid cars more popular worldwide by driving down their prices. Currently, customers in Japan pay a premium of around 500,000 Yen (approximately £2,500) for a hybrid – but Honda hopes to reduce this to around 200,000 Yen (£985).
Honda Motor president Takeo Fukui said: “If we could shrink the price gap to less than 200,000 Yen, then hybrids can compete with conventional cars.”
Honda aims to plug the gap between its models and the fast-selling Toyota Prius. It is considering releasing cheaper compact cars in growing markets such as India – a turnaround for Fukui who had originally stated that Honda would stay out of the race to develop ultra cheap cars. However, India’s Tata, to be released in October, and the emergence of Renault-Nissan, which will release a similarly priced car by 2011, has pushed Honda into action.
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