Honda City Concept Debuts at Australian Motor Show

This is not a car slotted to reach North American soil anytime soon, if ever.

Already launched in Thailand last month, the all-new third-generation Honda City will hit Australian streets from February 2009. However, for the Australian International Motor Show, Honda is presenting a futuristic City model in concept form.

Foreshadowing the styling possibilities of the new light car, the City Concept features a redesigned front end with custom LED headlamps, fog lamps and tail lights, redesigned mirrors, 17-inch wheels and lowered ride height.

The City will be offered in two spec levels, ranging from $17,990 to $21,990. Power will be delivered via the same 1.5-litre four-cylinder found in the Jazz - to which the City is the sedan counterpart - making 88kW and offering a fuel economy better than 6.4L/100km.

Source;

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/9644/2009-honda-city-2008-sydney-motor-show/

Honda's lineup prospers; Japanese rivals scurry to revise product plans

If there were an award for the smartest and luckiest automaker, Honda probably would have been declared the winner this year.

The spike in gasoline prices has pushed the product programs of some automakers into the shredder. Nissan and Toyota are dialing back their full-sized SUV and pickup programs and also are caught with a surplus of V-8 capacity.

But Honda's conservative product plan was the proper path, after all. Honda ignored dealer and media criticism over the past years that it failed to offer what Americans really wanted: big, body-on-frame, V-8-powered SUVs and pickups.

Nissan is abandoning full-sized truck development, shifting that responsibility along with assembly to a competitor, Dodge. Toyota's plan to be the complete truckmaker, by selling diesel and heavy-duty versions of the Tundra, is on hold.

This installment of Automotive News' annual future-product series reports on Japanese automakers' plans for the 2009-through-2012 model years.

Of course, each automaker is looking for methods to improve fuel economy. For example, the six-speed automatic transmission will be more common, potentially offering about a 6 percent increase in fuel economy over some four-speeds.

One striking contrast is immediately clear: Honda, Nissan and Toyota have plans for more hybrids. But Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki are still searching for a strategy.

Mitsubishi is eyeing a pure electric vehicle for U.S. sales. Nissan is promising such a vehicle in 2010, but sales are likely to be limited to "smile states." Why? Say the range is 100 miles on dry payment — just imagine how the range is reduced when the tires are slipping on snow-covered roads in Maine and Wisconsin.

Some brands are expanding their small-car lineup. New products here include the debut of the Nissan Cube and the likely introduction of the Mazda2. Acura is planning a luxury-car strategy to take on the big dogs. And Suzuki has an aggressive two-vehicle strategy aimed at the Honda Accord and the compact-pickup segment.

Read about each automaker's plans, based on conversations with industry sources.

Source; www.autonews.com

Honda's BIG Plans for Hybrid Sales

I found a nice article from Business Week online;

by Ian Rowley

TOKYO - With a solid lineup of small cars and superflexible factories that can quickly shift from SUVs to subcompacts, Honda Motor (HMC) has prospered lately. In June the Japanese automaker saw its sales jump by 14% even as its biggest rivals slumped.

But Honda's satisfaction with its results is tempered by the knowledge that they might have been far better if the carmaker had gotten its hybrid strategy right. While the company was the first major automaker to offer a hybrid in the U.S.—the Insight, introduced in 1999—Honda's efforts have long been overshadowed by Toyota Motor's (TM) success with the Prius. Honda misread what customers wanted, acknowledges research and development chief Masaaki Kato. As a result, the company has sold just 277,000 hybrids to date, compared with Toyota's 1.5 million. Honda stopped making the two-seat Insight in 2006 and last year ditched an unpopular Accord hybrid. Today, the company sells only one hybrid model: a version of the Civic compact. "I must admit that Toyota was better with its strategy of focusing on the Prius and trying to build an environment-friendly image," he says.

Now, Honda is fighting back. By early next decade, it aims to sell 500,000 hybrids annually, up from just 55,000 in 2007. Next year it expects to offer a new compact in the U.S., Japan, and Europe that, like the Prius, will be sold only as a hybrid. Honda has high hopes for the car, and wants to sell 200,000 units a year eventually. In 2010, Honda will launch a hybrid sportster based on a sleek concept car called the CR-Z that it unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October. That same year, Honda will likely release a new hybrid Civic, and it's planning to market a hybrid version of the Fit subcompact soon thereafter.

As sales pick up and Honda gets better at making hybrids, the company expects to reduce costs sharply. R&D boss Kato says he can bring the price differential between a hybrid and an equivalent gasoline-only car below $2,000. While not as powerful as Toyota's hybrid technology, the Honda system is lighter and less complex, so its new models may offer better gas mileage. Honda hasn't disclosed pricing, but the compact hybrid due next year could retail for around $18,000-$3,000 less than a Prius, reckons Tatsuo Yoshida, an analyst at UBS (UBS) in Tokyo. He adds that while selling 500,000 hybrids a year will be a challenge, the new cars could also help Honda steal some of the green limelight back from Toyota. "Publicity-wise, the new hybrids are very good news for Honda," he says.

For the rest of the article, follow the this link;
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_30/b4093062857546.htm?chan=autos_autos+--+lifestyle+subindex+page_top+stories