The most maligned hybrid on the market today is the Honda CR-Z. It comes down to false expectations. Take one look at the sporty design of the coupe, and you might expect it to be a rip-roaring fast automobile. The people who complain most about the CR-Z—as if it’s some kind of personal attack on their worldview—say the same old thing over and over again: “It’s nor fast enough, nor fuel efficient enough.” But they’re looking at the wrong cues for an understanding of the car, and therefore miss the charms and benefits of the Honda CR-Z.
Despite its investment in hybrids, electric cars, fuel cell vehicles and the compressed natural gas Civic GX, Honda has earned a reputation for a string of green car missteps. Yet, the company is tenacious—taking a hard study of each shortcoming, and applying those lessons to new and improved green strategies. We spoke with William Walton, manager of product planning for Honda’s lineup of cars from Fit to Accord, to see if Honda might have finally set out on the right course.
A few weeks ago, we checked out a manual shift CR-Z EX with navigation for a week. Logging 379 miles during the seven days, fuel mileage was recorded in three segments: 73 miles of normal running errands and shopping in town; 132 mile drive from Olympia, Wash. to Seattle during morning and late afternoon brake lights and gridlocks; and 174 miles of hey, let’s flog this thing and see just how sporty it is, and oh yeah, how much gas did the little four-banger guzzle.
The Japanese Prime Minister, Kan Naoto, is presenting Japan’s Good Design Grand Award today to the Honda CR-Z sporty hybrid. This follows yesterday’s news that the CR-Z was named the 2011 winner of Japan’s prestigious Car Of The Year award. Why has it not been well-received in the U.S.? Maybe it's misplaced nostalgia for the old Honda CR-X that served as the CR-Z's inspiration. "People forget what the CR-X really was, or they think it’s something that it’s not,” said Woody Rogers, who owned and loved his 1988 Honda CR-X.
Twelve modified 2011 Honda CR-Z sport hybrid coupes were unveiled today at the 2010 SEMA (specialty equipment) Show in Las Vegas. Honda placed a strong claim on the tuner tradition of the classic Honda CRX, which served as inspiration for the CR-Z hybrid. Honda’s gambit with the CR-Z is to create a blend of performance, style, fun and green—pushing hybrid cars further out of a pure eco-oriented sphere to a mainstream market that sees green simply as another aspect of a car's coolness.
Our 125-mile loop consisted of a broad sampling of road conditions: highways, town streets, and sweeping country roads. We did not apply hyper-mile techniques, but instead moved right with the traffic. At the end of the run, our automatic CR-Z tester tallied 35.3 miles per gallon—a couple of mpgs shy of the EPA ratings of 36 miles per gallon in the city and 38 on the highway with an automatic transmission. Still, the ride was fun. You can't say that about every hybrid.
Honda this week gave automotive journalists their first chance behind the wheel of the 2011 Honda CR-Z Hybrid. Honda’s goal with the all-new two-seater is to combine the fuel parsimony of a hybrid with the sportiness of the company’s classic CRX coupe—and to offer it as the most affordable hybrid on the market. Did Honda succeed? See a sampling of reviews from the web.
Honda’s new CR-Z hybrid coupe is schedule to hit dealerships in the UK and USA at about the same time this summer. But while the CR-Z has so far remained under the radar in America, the gas-electric coupe is garnering a lot of positive press on the other side of the pond. British reviewers even think the hybrid is sexy.
John Mendel, Honda’s executive vice president, yesterday called for policy makers to refrain from promoting “the virtues of one technology and demonizing another.” Speaking at the Moving Ahead 2010 conference at Ohio State University, Mendel suggested that government agencies are “laying all their chips on the technology du jour.” Without explicitly pointing fingers at EVs, Mendel made it abundantly clear that he believes support for electric cars and next-generation batteries represent “a rush to select a winner that could lead us in the wrong direction.”
Takanobu Ito, Honda’s president, said last week that the company has grown “complacent,” and specifically pointed to its poor performance with hybrids as a key sign of the problem. To correct the situation, Ito is pushing his engineers to have the next-generation Honda Insight beat the Toyota Prius’s fuel economy numbers—and to deliver it as soon as possible.
Honda is developing a hybrid system suitable for larger cars such as the Odyssey minivan the Pilot sports utility vehicle. Tomohiko Kawanabe, Honda’s chief operating officer for automobile research and development, today told Reuters, "We've left the research stage and entered the field of development." Kawanabe said these vehicles could hit the US market in about three years. The change of strategy could put Honda back in the hybrid game.
In the past, the Detroit auto show was all about theater. Pulsating music, fog machines, and sexy models. Some of that remains, but at this year’s show, starting next week, automakers are getting real. After years of spending millions of dollars on glitzy displays but fighting higher efficiency standards, car companies are finally putting their energies into the battle for leadership in advanced fuel-saving technology.
