Honda's new hybrid car the Insight
The world’s cheapest hybrid car has been unveiled by Honda in an attempt to win over motorists facing high fuel costs.
Expected to sell at somewhere between £13,000 and £15,000 the new Honda Insight will undercut the best-selling Toyota Prius by at least £3,000.
The Japanese manufacturer expects to sell 200,000 Insights a year around the world, which would dwarf its previous sales of hybrids – a total of 280,000 over the past decade.
Its new model, to be formally unveiled at next month’s Paris motorshow, will be a five door family hatchback which is expected to deliver around 60 miles to the gallon.
The car will go on sale throughout the world in the spring and will be part of a family of four new hybrids produced by Honda, which will include a new Civic, a version of the Honda Jazz and a sports car.
Within two years, the company expects one in 10 of its sales to be hybrids and it predicts the rest of the market will follow.
It is the latest evidence of how soaring fuel prices and pressure from Governments is set to transform the car market not only in Britain but across the world.
In Britain, recent figures produced by the Society of Motoring Manufacturers and Traders show that sales of environmentally friendly cars are rising dramatically as demand for luxury models plummets.
Sales of hybrids and biofuel models, including a version of the Saab 9-3, shot up by nearly a fifth.
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The industry believes that demand will continue to rise for alternatively-fuelled vehicles.
“If this trend continues manufacturers could face a struggle to keep up,” said an SMMT spokesman.
Currently environmentally conscious motorists looking for alternative cars have three choices.
There are hybrids, which use a combination of electricity and petrol to power the car.
Motorists can also buy electric cars, which are plugged in overnight and have a limited range of up to 60 miles and then there are cars such as the Saab 9-3 biopower which can be filled with a mixture of bioethanol, made from plants, and petrol.
Longer term options include a plug-in hybrid, such as the Chevrolet Volt, which is due to go on sale in 2010.
The car is charged overnight, but when electric power runs out, it continues on using conventional petrol engine which also acts as a generator to recharge the battery.
In Britain the Government is increasing the cost of the annual tax disc for gas guzzling cars from 2009 in an attempt to encourage people to buy “greener” cars.
Existing owners of many vehicles including ordinary family cars will be left worse off as a result.
The USA, which is even more dependent on the car, is determined to cut its dependence on oil.
Not only has George Bush said that the country must produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022, but that cars as a whole must average 35 miles to the gallon – an improvement of 40 per cent.
If Barack Obama wins the presidency he plans to put 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on American roads by 2015 as the cornerstone of his plan for energy independence.
Elsewhere the Belgians, for example, rebate 15 per cent of the car’s price, if it emits less than 105 grams of CO2 per kilometre.
In the longer term, the European Union is pushing for manufacturers to comply with a mandatory ceiling on carbon emissions.
It would limit car makers to an average of 130 grams of CO2 per kilometre.
A poll commissioned by Friends of the Earth has shown overwhelming backing for the tighter environmental controls on the car industry.
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