A friend told me that he was at a dealership in california who said that 'the word on the street' was that honda was going to stop making hybrid vehicles, citing sluggish sales as the main reason. I have not heard any news like this at all. Does anyone out there have any details of this??

thanks!
jco

 

I doubt this is true at all, i have yet to see a hybrid sitting on a honda lot ever.

 

I know they had planned to back off prior to the CA carpool extension but it didn't happen. It could be true if they're not really selling that well. Without carpool advantage and considering they're kinda gutless, plus more expensive, I can see why people might not think they're worth it. Considering cost to produce, they may just not pencil out for the Honda peeps. Apparently they're discounting Prius's cuz they're sitting around.

 

He's referring to the soon-to-be-gone Accord hybrid. The Civic is seeing what, double-digit sales increases?

 

That is the most absurd thing ever. But, I do agree that it "is word" on the street, no doubt planted for a purpose.
Some of the same bone-headed folks, take Honda's plans to not follow hybridization for larger platforms and instead choose clean diesel, as a sign that they are dropping out of the hybrid market altogether.


Honda is not stopping hybrid production at all.
In fact, they are selling all the HCH's they make and they would sell many more if they had the production capacity. They've already announced an increase in capacity by extending the manufacturing to China. This also came along with the projected 200,000 units per year for the upcoming dedicated hybrid in 2009. The HCH-II production is capacity limited at 38,000 units per year and in many markets there are 5-7 week waiting lists.
I had to wait 45 days for my wife's 2007 HCH.

Cheers;

MSantos

 

thanks everyone...it sounded impossible, but i had to check with you guys just to be assured.

jco

 

45 days??

My dealer picked up 14 from a Shreveport dealer. By the time I wandered in they had 3 left. I drove one and decided to sleep on it. Called the next day and they had 1 left. Happily, it was the one I wanted and the day after that I once again had a car payment.........


Here they can't keep them on the lot.

 

I went car shopping to a Toyota dealer (before picking up my HCHII ) I was told the same thing. I am sure that they are exaggerating the fact that Accord Hybrids will no longer be produced, and thusly say "Honda won't produce any more hybrids."

 

You just about waited to long Scuddy!!! They actually went that fast, that is hard to believe. It sounds to me like Honda should be putting more effort into producing more of this car. H

 

At their post-Q2 marketing call, Honda announced they would produce another hybrid that does not share a platform with a gas model, and is priced below the HCH. I think Honda's take is that people who want hybrids want cars that get extremely high (Insight high if you will) gas mileage so it doesn't make sense to try to cram hybrid technology into every vehicle they make. It's easy to get excited about cars that get 60mpg, but it's less compelling with an SUV that only gets 30mpg.

Toyota on the other hand seems to be going down the opposite track (i.e. put a hybrid motor on every car they sell) depending on what marketing literature you read. The thing that is interesting there is that in order to have an electric motor motivate a heavy vehicle, it needs to have a lot of power/juice which makes the price differencial between a gas and hybrid version greater.