Cheap New Hybrid Model from Honda

American Depositary Shares of Honda Motor Co. slipped slightly on Wednesday as analysts weighed in on the Japanese automaker’s plans outlined at a meeting in Tokyo, including its decision to launch a new hybrid next year. They will sell a new, improved and affordable gas-electric hybrid in the U.S., Japan and Europe starting in early 2009, underlining the Japanese automaker’s commitment to “green” technology, the company president said Wednesday.
This Japan’s second-largest automaker Honda Motor Co. -which beat Toyota to the market with the first gas-electric car, the Honda Insight, in 1999 - will spend a total of 158 billion yen ($1.5 billion) building a car engine plant and a new assembly line as it seeks to strengthen its domestic production.

The weapon Fukui chose was a lineup of four models, including Honda’s sole current hybrid in production, the Civic Hybrid; a new hybrid-only model yet to be named, which will be a five-door, five-passenger compact, with an exterior design similar to its new fuel cell vehicle concept, the FCX Clarity; a hybrid sports car version of its CR-Z line; and a new hybrid model for its Fit compact cars, sold as the Jazz in Europe. Sketches of Honda’s new hybrid ideas first appeared as early as October of last year.
In addition to the new hybrid, Honda will introduce several other hybrids: a Civic, a new sporty model based on the CR-Z and a Fit subcompact, sold as the Jazz in Europe, Fukui said. It says it anticipates selling 500,000 hybrid units in total annually.
“Hybrids have drawn attention for their image, but time has come to go to the next step,” he said, stressing that Honda was serious about selling hybrids in numbers.
It plans to reduce its production costs with a new electronic control unit and a thinner and more compact battery. A thinner motor has also been developed

By twinning a conventional engine and battery-powered electric motor, hybrids currently add $5,000 or more to comparable gasoline models, a premium Fukui hopes to bring down to around $2,000 in the next generation of hybrids. Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo said Honda hoped to price the hybrid-only car under 2 million yen ($19,290).
Honda now only sells one hybrid car — a gasoline-electric version of the mass-volume Civic sedan which starts at around 2.3 million yen — after discontinuing its hybrid-only Insight two-seater in 2006.