Honda is reporting mushrooming sales of hybrids as buyers become more concerned with the environmental impact of their cars.
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The brand’s UK environmental manager John Kingston told just-auto that sales of hybrids had jumped 110% in the first quarter of this year, fuelled by media coverage of motoring environmental concerns rising by 200% in the same period.
Honda expects to sell 4,500 hybrids in the UK this year, compared to 650 in 2006.
“Customers now see the environment as a very important factor when buying their car,” Kingston said.
Globally Honda is increasing its petrol hybrid programme, and will launch a new model, smaller than the current Civic but larger than a supermini, in 2009. This car is expected to sell 200,000 a year worldwide, the same as Honda’s entire hybrid sales in the seven years since the Insight was introduced in 1999.
Honda’s larger cars will not, however, gain hybrid engines [though it has sold a hybrid Accord in North America]. The company believes there are fewer benefits from the petrol-electric drivetrain in such vehicles, so is developing more efficient diesels, with a ‘super-clean diesel’ launching in the USA in 2010.
This will reduce emissions of NOx and particulates to petrol levels, Honda believing this area will be the next major environmental battleground.
Honda also has a biofuel programme, but has no plans to introduce such vehicles to Europe due to a lack of infrastructure, in particular suitable fuel pumps. In the long term, the company believes fuel cell vehicles will provide the most effective environmental answer.
Andrew Charman
