SunCorp

Honda, Toyota Step On Hybrid Pedals As Crude Prices Near $100

 At a dinner for scores of journalists and dealers from the Asia-Pacific region hosted by him on the sidelines of the Tokyo Motor Show last week, Honda Motor President and CEO Takeo Fukui stopped by for a chat at a table with Indian journalists. A veteran auto journo was quick to grab the opportunity to pop a question: How are you going to reconcile your professed commitment to environmental efficiency with the promise of making your cars fun to ride? Fukui was unfazed by the question: “You’ll find out for yourself tomorrow,” he came back with a confident smile.

What the Honda CEO was referring to was the fact that the Indian journalists invited by his company to visit the Motor Show, would be test driving the FCX concept car at Honda proving grounds about 100 km north of Tokyo the next day. With a maximum speed of 160 kmph and a sleek design, the new concept car is already a significant improvement over its earlier version. What’s more, it costs less to produce. A day earlier, Fukui had ridden in to the Honda stall for a press conference on a Puyo, another eco-friendly fuel-cell concept car while the other car on the dais was a hybrid, this one a sport model, the CR-Z. The brief speech he made at the start of the conference was almost entirely focussed on the clean technologies that Honda intends to bring to the market.
    These include a commercial vehicle based on the FCX concept to be launched in Japan and the US next year and one based on the CR-Z by 2009. It’s obvious that Honda sees cars that use alternatives to fossil fuels as the future of the automobile industry. Honda is not alone in this respect. Other carmakers at the show also displayed their green technologies. Toyota, which was the first to make a major push into hybrids with its Prius about a decade ago, showcased concept cars like the hybrid Crown, the I/X which it says is engineered to be twice as energy efficient as the Prius and the hybrid sports car FT-HS.
    Nissan’s Green 2010 Plan envisages that by the end of this decade only one-third the cars sold will be combustion-engine powered, the remaining twothirds made up of a mix of electric, fuel cell and hybrid cars.