Is there another Honda Hybrid coming out?

At the New York auto show, Toyota announced a 270HP Hybrid Highlander.
Last night on KRON-4 news in San Francisco, there was a snippet about a
more powerful Hybrid coming out from Honda.

I saw the teaser intro, but I missed the article.

 

I own a large block of stock in a company that supplies hydrogen
for automobiles. Several of us in the automobile business were
invited to the company headquarters near Allentown PA last month
to see and drive a hydrogen/electric hybrid Toyota Highlander.
Several of the things that made a big impression on me were how
quietly it ran, that it takes TWENTY minutes to fill the tank and
the Toyota engineer said
if sold today it would cost close to a MILLION dollars to buy.
Mr. Ferrari eat your hart out. By the way the New York
International Auto Show isn't until April. The talk in the
business is that GM is going to offer its gas/electric hybrids,
not as special vehicles ala Prius, but as an option on several of
it regular cars and trucks. The kicker is they plan to sell the
option like Ford does with it 'flex fuel' vehicles. That is list
the option price on the window label then discount the price
100%, in the name of CAFE, so they can sell more of the big new
high powered RWD cars and trucks that buyerS want to buy today.
The big Hummer that sells for well over 100K outsells the Prius
more than two to one.


mike hunt

 

Crossed up two lines on the web page ;-)
autos.nytimes.com had an article about the Detroit auto show.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/business/06hybrid.html

I only saw mention of the Toyota Highlander in yesterday's edition, but
today it also mentions an Acura Hybrid.

"Every Prius we make, we make a profit," Toyota said.

In addition to the Prius, Toyota will offer a hybrid version of
the Lexus RX sport utility by fall. On Sunday, the company added that
within a year it would sell a hybrid version of the Toyota Highlander,
an S.U.V. that is built on the same underpinnings as the Lexus. A
Toyota executive said the Highlander hybrid could travel 600 miles on
a single tank of gas.

On Monday, Honda said that it would add a hybrid car from its Acura
division this year to the two Honda hybrids that it already sells.

Another source quotes Honda differently, citing an Accord Hybrid:
* Introduction in 2004 of a V6 powered gas-electric hybrid Accord using
Honda's Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) hybrid system in combination with
Variable Cylinder Management (VCM) technology for V6 performance with
fuel economy equivalent to a four-cylinder Civic;

 

The $100K Hummer is the H1

2002 sales:

Hummer H1 720
Toyota Prius 20,119

Prius sales are definitely increasing with the new model. H1 sales
never amounted to many units because it is so ill-suited to road use
(and way too expensive.) H2 is not a lot better and I think that
demand for it has been dropping.

Your million dollar hybrid is a fuel cell vehicle. Not sure fuel
cells will ever be practical. I doubt that it is a even a hybrid,
i.e. combination of combustion engine and electric motors. Probably
has only an electric motor(s) and just uses batteries to recover some
energy and increase peak power.

The new Prius is a very practical car. Honda has announced that a
Hybrid Accord is on the way.

 

On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 22:08:33 +0000 (UTC), said:

dold> At the New York auto show, Toyota announced a 270HP Hybrid
dold> Highlander. Last night on KRON-4 news in San Francisco, there
dold> was a snippet about a more powerful Hybrid coming out from
dold> Honda.

dold> I saw the teaser intro, but I missed the article.

I'm hoping this quote from a Wired article is correct:

"Brauer [from Edmunds.com] said consumers looking for a family-size
vehicle can expect Honda to ship an Odyssey hybrid minivan in
2004."

For the full article, see:

http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,61645,00.html?tw=wn_techhead_17

--david