Honda Plans Lithium-Ion Civic to Narrow Toyota’s Lead

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- Honda Motor Co., Japan’s second- largest carmaker, plans to introduce lithium-ion battery-powered hybrid cars as it struggles to narrow Toyota Motor Corp.’s lead in sales of gasoline-electric cars.

Honda plans to use lithium-ion batteries in its Civic compact “within the next two to three years,” as well as in its Acura luxury cars and other models, Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo said in an interview.

Honda has failed to match Toyota’s success with hybrids, led by the top-selling Prius. Lithium-ion batteries can store as much as twice the energy of nickel-metal hydride batteries that currently power the Prius and Honda’s Civic, Insight and CR-Z hybrid models, said Takeshi Miyao, a supply-chain analyst for auto consultant Carnorama in Tokyo.

“Lithium will become a lot more prevalent,” Kondo said in a March 16 interview at the company’s headquarters in Tokyo. The lithium-ion batteries will be produced with Honda’s joint- venture partner, Kyoto-based GS Yuasa Corp., starting in the second half of this year, he said. The venture is 49 percent owned by Honda.

Honda fell 1.5 percent to close at 3,200 yen in Tokyo trading.

“With lithium-ion being used in upcoming electric cars, Honda may be switching to the new technology to compete,” said Mitsuru Kurokawa, an analyst at consulting company IHS Global Insight in Tokyo.

Insight Misses
Honda’s Insight hybrid fell short of the company’s global sales target of 200,000 units in the first year after its February 2009 debut. Deliveries totaled 143,015 as of last month.

Toyota’s third-generation Prius replaced the Insight as the best-selling car in Japan after its release last year. Toyota sold 27,008 Priuses in February, compared with Honda’s 3,517 Insight deliveries.

In the U.S., Toyota sold 7,968 Prius cars last month, compared with Honda’s 2,014 Insights. The hybrid version of the Civic sold 346 units. The larger Prius is more fuel-efficient than Honda’s hybrids, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

Honda Chief Executive Officer Takanobu Ito said in July the carmaker is developing a new hybrid system to be installed in mid- to large-size vehicles. The company will also add a hybrid version of its Fit subcompact later this year.

Cost Savings
While similarly sized lithium-ion batteries may cost 30 percent more than nickel-metal hydride cells, carmakers may be able to find savings by using smaller packs because of their higher energy density, Miyao at Carnorama said.

Lithium-ion costs will also decline as technical advances are made and production increases, according to research company Fuji Keizai Group.

Nissan Motor Co. will roll out its first lithium-ion battery-powered car, the Leaf, this year in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn predicts electric vehicles will account for 10 percent of global car sales by 2020.

Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.’s Subaru unit and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. introduced electric vehicles last year. Mitsubishi will start delivering its 4.6 million yen ($51,000) i-MiEV to retail customers next month.

Toyota plans to begin retail sales of a lithium-ion powered plug-in Prius in two years. The company will also start selling a short-distance all-electric car in 2012.

Separately, Honda’s Kondo said he expects overall vehicle demand in the U.S. to rise to between 11 million and 12 million units this year from 10.4 million in 2009. That’s still lower than the 13.2 million sold in 2008.

Honda’s U.S. sales in the first 10 days of March were up almost 20 percent from a year earlier, Kondo said. For the full month, sales will likely exceed the 13 percent growth posted in February, he said.

Source;
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-18/honda-plans-lithium-ion-civic-to-narrow-toyota-s-lead-update1-.html

Honda Cars For 2010 Will Include More Fuel Efficiency For Insight and Civic (Hybrid Odyssey?!?)

You'll want to keep reading to the end of this post (and I've even highlighted it).
Honda cars are entering a new generation of hybrid technologies, which include the 2010 Honda Insight and the Civic. The 2009 Honda Civic is still a great fuel efficient vehicle with proven reliability. Insight has all the new great tools and green technology to provide drivers with accurate fuel efficiency.

Electric cars are growing in higher demand than ever before. Automakers are converting their popular models with new plug in options and hybrid batteries. The industry is changing and the future brings clean energy and fewer carbon emissions.

The Honda Insight is a new fuel-efficient automobile which delivers an MPG rating of 40 in the city and 43 on the highway. It offers 5 doors and seats up to five passengers including the driver. Insight was designed and built from the ground up.

The eco-friendly vehicle also features a new projector-beam headlight which provides better roadway lighting for greater visibility. Insight comes equipped with a continuously variable transmission (CVT) which substitutes the gears found in more traditional transmissions and replaces them with a metal push-belt running between a pair of variable-width pulleys. The CVT includes the Drive-by-Wire throttle system which constantly adjusts to providing the most efficient drive ratio possible depending on the torque load.

Honda Civic Hybrid is powered by a 1.3-liter i-VTEC engine with Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) gasoline-electric hybrid technology to enhance both fuel economy and performance. The car is equipped with a continuously variable transmission. The hybrid vehicle is classified as Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicles (AT-PZEV).

The IMA hybrid technology achieves an EPA-estimated city/highway fuel economy of 40/45 miles per gallon. It is also interesting to note that the car can deactivate all four of its cylinders and operate using only the electric motor in certain low-speed cruising situations. The electric motor has 15 kilowatts and can produce a combined 110-horsepower.

The Honda Satellite-Linked Navigation System has a 6.5-inch motorized display that opens and closes for access to the internal single-disc CD player. The system also includes a digital audio-card reader that can play MP3 and Windows Media 3 Audio (WMA) files from CompactFlash 4 cards. The navigation system features more than 7 million points of interest and the voice activation can control the navigation menus and the audio system, along with entering city and street names.

Honda is also expected to deliver a new hybrid minivan next year which resembles the Odyssey and the Estima, which are already selling in Japan. The 2010 electric car line-up with hybrid technologies is looking good.

My guess is that this would be for the Japanese market only, but could morph into an eventual Hybrid Stream coming to North America!

Source;
http://www.newsoxy.com/hybrid-cars/2010-honda-insight-civic/article11991.html

2009 Honda Civic 4DR Hybrid

We've said in the past the best thing about the Honda Civic Hybrid is that it's a Civic, and that's still true. The best thing about hybrids, of course, is that they don't require any changes to the current infrastructure. We don't have to have different fuel tanks, or put electric charging facilities in new or existing fueling stations. We just stop and pump in ten or 12 gallons of 87 octane unleaded and we're good to go.

And that is one HUGE advantage hybrid cars and trucks have over nearly all of the other "alternative" energy sources. Hydrogen requires specialized storage, at least, until someone comes up with a viable (including cost-effective) way to convert water carried in tanks on the car or truck into hydrogen as needed.

Solar? You have to be kidding. Our best use of solar for cars at this time might well be to use it to power some of the onboard gadgets or even to power the air conditioning compressor. Mazda used some small solar panels to power a fan to keep the interior cool when the car was parked that could also be used to charge the battery. It was both a gimmick and a chance to work with solar technology and make enough solar panels to lower their cost.

Take the Civic Hybrid. One feature is an "Auto Stop" control that turns off the engine while you are stopped at a stop sign or traffic light, and then turns it back on when you release the brake. It's a trick several new cars use, and they keep things like the power steering and air conditioning running by powering them electrically instead of using engine power to do it.

Until now, everything on the car was run, directly or indirectly, by engine power. The battery is a storage battery, used to re-start the car after you've turned the engine off. Once it does that, it normally charges itself back up (which takes a few seconds) and then waits for the next time you need to start the car or until some other electrical malfunction disables the charging system (alternator). If the normal charging is interrupted, the battery will run the electrical systems until it goes dead.

Which means you are using engine power to run the radio, the power steering system, the air conditioner and so on. The battery isn't doing anything most of the time. But it could. Small solar panels can continually charge the battery and the power used to run all the added electrical gadgets (and we do love our gadgets).

How important that might be depends on the future cost of fossil fuels and how fast alternatives can be developed. Right now, automakers are using combinations of other fuel sources or means of saving fuel to make fairly large gains in fuel economy. But the technology to do it isn't cheap.

Honda's Civic costs around three to five thousand dollars less than the Honda Civic Hybrid, and the hybrid version does get better fuel economy. We made our usual run down to South Texas and recorded a solid 42 miles per gallon overall, running at 70 miles per hour, reasonably close to the 45 mpg the EPA expects from the Civic Hybrid. In the city if was closer to 35 mpg, which is still pretty respectable.

Our test Civic was equipped with just about everything, including a navigational system and leather seats, plus a satellite radio. It used a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) and had all the usual power everything, making one wonder why they don't sell even more of them, as it has everything you need.

Of course, you could buy the lower priced non-hybrid Civic and get all that for much less, but you wouldn't be quite as kind to the environment; it just depends on your priorities. With the Civic, you get hybrid in a proven car, with the only drawback a bit stiffer ride, even though the Civic Hybrid weighs only about 80 pounds more than the standard version.

We also wonder what changes in battery technology might bring before the battery pack needs changing. Perhaps we'll see a much more efficient battery pack, even a more efficient electric motor so the Civic could run longer and faster on the batteries alone.

In the meantime, the Civic Hybrid has the edge it has always had, now in a more up-to-date package: it's a Honda, and it's a Civic.

Source;
http://oakhillgazette.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=109&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdetail=2144&wpage=&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1846&hn=oakhillgazette&he=.net