That's kind of an oxymoron as well as a very muddled concept.
What is high-performance in a Hybrid? More range? More miles per gallon? Acceleration and speed?
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General discussion
Honda drops Accord Hybrid
The new Honda Accord, which will go on sale in September, will not be available in a gasoline-electric hybrid version, according to a company spokesman.
"We have found that our hybrid system works better on smaller cars," said Chris Naughton, a Honda spokesman.
Honda previously announced that it will introduce a new hybrid car in 2009. That car will be smaller in size and less expensive than the Honda Civic Hybrid. The Accord, a midsized car, is larger and more expensive than the Civic.
Honda currently makes a hybrid Accord that's engineered to provide a balance of performance and fuel economy, using a 6-cylinder gasoline engine rather than a smaller 4-cylinder engine.
The competing Toyota Camry Hybrid uses a four-cylinder engine resulting in considerably better fuel economy than the Accord Hybrid.
Hybrids accounted for 14 percent of Camrys sold last month, but just 1.4 percent of Accords, according to data from Power Information Networks, an auto research firm. The Accord and Camry are the two best-selling passenger cars in the United States.
"We have seen that what interests hybrid consumers is ultimate fuel economy," Naughton said.
"what interests hybrid consumers is ultimate fuel economy,"
Kind of a No Brainer there sport... if you are buying a hybrid, you are buying it for economical reasons. Now if the world only used hybrids? Then there might be a call for a hi-performance version.
grim
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... acceleration with gas performance. I had a fiat spider back in the early Eighties that would go fast and got 40 MPG but it was an extremely light car. Honda was trying to take a midsize sedan and give it some giddy up along with extreme fuel economy.
Certainly an oxymoron of a concept. Kind of like putting an electric motor in a Doge Challenger R/T circa 1972. You're left asking... "what's the point"?
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that an electric motor might have been considered, but it wouldn't fit under the hood.
Somehow, I think the rich people buying hybrids would feel guilty about acceleration.
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I'm surprised it didn't sell better than it apparently did. I'd like to see more hybrid models as well; in addition to helping reduce fuel consumption, if there were more of them the price differences between standard and hybrid versions of the same car might come down a bit.
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That sure sounds like an endorsement.
I don't think I'll trade in my Mustang quite yet.
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I was comparing the standard V6 Accord with the hybrid V6 Accord. I just went to the Consumer Reports site (it's by subscription so I won't post the link). The standard V6 goes from 0-60 in 7.3 seconds. The hybrid goes from 0-60 in 6.9 seconds. So yes, it is faster.
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It just gives the rich a faster car.
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The rich? The Accord is now a luxury car???? And it DOES use less fuel than the standard version.
I will bow out of this thread before it sinks any lower. Bye.
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I never said it wasn't faster. I did question the use of 'supposedly faster'.
A $30,000 plus car certainly sounds rich to me, but I guess some folks don't see that as a high price. While the acceleration is nothing to write home about, advertising an 'earth saver' with horsepower (253) and acceleration numbers sounds perfectly hypocritical to me. It's the kind of mentality that buys carbon 'credits' while jetting around the world.
Actually, it's quite predictable.
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I have read a few different articles but, haven't found much that was really credible when it comes to what Honda will or won't do when it comes to alternative fuel cars. At one point, they were supposed to be moving forward with a Hybrid Civic http://e85.whipnet.net/flex.cars/honda.ffv.html and then they said they were not that interested in making an alternative fuel car...
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As I understand it, buyers preferred the Toyota Camry hybrid over the Accord one.
An aside..... there are a couple of people in my city who had their cars modified to run on the discarded deep fat frying oil at restaurants. Free. People say it sure smells good when they drive by.
Honda has been creative, and seems to have its finger on the pulse of what buyers will want. My guess is that they will come up with good ideas.
Angeline
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I looked into the hybrid Camry (my wife loves her Prius!) but was unimpressed. The problem is luggage space -- to have room for the batteries (more are required for the larger car) they had to shrink the trunk down to 10.? square feet. That's actually four sq. feet less than with the nominally smaller Prius! I think the real answer for larger cars, to meet the new CAFE standards (legislation is now being debated to increase it by 10 mpg to 35 by 2010) is the much cleaner-burning diesel engine, fueled by biodiesel. Unfortunately, greed is rearing its ugly head, and the current biodiesel producers are trying to block the recent Conoco-Tyson deal to build a plant that will turn chicken and cow manure into biodiesel -- the first (pilot) plant would supposedly produce enough biodiesel annually to provide the energy requirements for 250,000 homes!
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The opinions expressed above are my own,
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My first thought is to wonder what is this chicken and cow manure currently used for. My guess is that it's fertilizer to produce food...ie, human fuel. And now it should become fuel for automobiles and such? I can't be sure this is a wise move but admit to not knowing the whole argument. We must remember that, for something to get clean something else gets dirty.
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can be modified to produce fuel and fertilizer. To put it through a process that uses every bit of the manure for fuel purposes would use quite a bit of energy itself... unless they used the left over manure as fuel for the rendering pots.
Depend on how passive and self sustaining a process it is I guess.
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I'm stuck with my 2000 honda CR-V for a few more years so I have yet to look into what is available hybrid wise. Where I live we have to have a 4 wheel dr and the extra cargo room comes in handy. I can imagine how tiny the ultra fuel efficient models can be (thinking back to my 2+2 Fiat Spyder). Still, my CR-V gets 28 MPG when running at tip top so I can't complain to much.
As for CAFE standards? Those standards are so abused. One model's efficiency is designed to make up for the short comings of another! That makes the real benefits of CAFE hard to see if everyone buys the gas hogs. I would like to see drivers pay a milage tax based on fuel efficiency of your vehicle. You chose to drive a gas hog and you pay for it at the pump or when you pay your personal property taxes. That would shut down those who complain that their freedom of choice of vehicle is being infringed upon while making the rest of us pay for their personal choices which regulate gas prices vis a vis supply and demand.
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