Quote:
Originally Posted by Rubba Burna
ewwwwwwww hybrid =[ the fit has crossed over to the other side... the pussi side -.- BLEH althought the facelift does sound nice. but hybrid? come on, does that have to happen?  |
That's what I wanted, was a hybrid. But I couldn't justify the price of a Prius and felt the Prius was too big. Then the Insight, which is almost a duplicate of the Prius, for a lower price, with lower mpg than the Prius. Still not what I wanted.
Honda HAS to make a small 4-seater that is a hybrid. No doubt. The upcoming iQ from Toyota/Scion will be a serious contender against both the FIT and the Smart...in that it seats 3 1/2 (LOL) and gets supposedly around 50 mpg.
That was a car I couldn't wait for any more than I could wait around for the Hybrid Fit. I needed a car, right then and there back in December.
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Reports suggest the iQ may be the first model in a series,
[13] and that Toyota may export the iQ to the North American market as a
Scion.
[14] Reports from Toyota engineers suggest the iQ platform will serve as the basis of the next generation Toyota
Yaris as well as a possible subcompact
hybrid car, to challenge the
CY 2009
Honda Insight[15] Competitors include the
Fiat 500,
Subaru R1 and
Smart Fortwo.
Toyota iQ - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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If they plan on making that little car into a hybrid, and Smart already has a hybrid in Europe (stop/start system), Honda is BEHIND. Way behind.
Honda will not only have to come up with a competitor to the iQ, but add in some other goodies to really draw people...the green market that is.
My opinion is that EVERYTHING should have a hybrid option. Honda blew it with the first Insight. They stopped making it. That was blowing it. They made a new Insight, a behemoth, the only thing it has in common with the first Insight is the name and it being a hybrid. The new Insight certainly gets nowhere close to 70 mpg.
Honda does not have a city car. They need to have that in the line up, and it needs to be a hybrid. It NEEDS to get mind boggling mpg. I'd prefer it to have a higher seating position than the old Insight, as that was much like the CRX and it was too hard to get in and out of. Too low. Long doors with a hinge around the knees mean tight angles at the front of the door, leading to problem in tight parking spaces.
Volkswagon is already working on city cars too:
Volkswagen up! - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Technology like this needs to be out there now, including using it for a hybrid (the roof panel) as not all people have access to plug in a car:
Volkswagen Introduces space up! blue at Los Angeles