Hot on hybrids

Associated Press

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — Tom and Fiorella Williams put in an order for a new Honda Civic Hybrid sight unseen, without so much as a test drive.

They bought the car, which runs on both gasoline and electricity, because it guzzles less gas and spews less pollution than conventional cars that run solely on gas. But they wouldn’t have bought it if it didn’t handle and look like the Civic they previously owned.

The Honda Civic Hybrid, which reached dealerships last month, is the first established mainstream vehicle to be equipped with a combination gasoline-electric power system.

Americans have never been enamored with cars that have any hint of electric power; buyers have been turned off by high prices and performance limitations. Some people, however, think the new Honda could be the first hybrid that will appeal to a larger number of Americans.

The Williamses were willing to pay an extra $2,500 or so for the car because they are concerned about the environment. They also wanted better gas mileage, and the Hybrid gets 600 miles to a tankful.

"We fell in love with the car when it was introduced last fall," Tom Williams said. "We got the second one the dealer sold."

Americans have been hearing about electric cars for years, and the image is etched into our brains: pipsqueaks with clunky batteries that need to be plugged in every few hundred miles.

The first electric cars manufactured for the masses turned out to be gas-electric hybrids, and they are far from the stereotype.

Honda launched its two-seat Insight model in December 1999, and the four-door Toyota Prius went to market a few months later. But they were built exclusively as hybrids, and Americans have bought only 35,000 or so of them — a tiny blip compared to the more than 16 million cars sold in the United States each year.

That doesn’t mean Americans don’t like the idea of hybrid cars. A recent survey by J.D. Power and Associates, a market research firm based in Agoura Hills, Calif., found that 60 percent of 5,200 new car buyers said they would consider buying a hybrid.

If, that is, the technology were available in the car they already drive, said Thad Malesh, director of J.D. Power’s alternative power technologies.

The Civic Hybrid might be the car that provides a breakthrough in hybrid car manufacturing, he said. It’s larger than the initial offerings from Honda and Toyota, and the Civic is already the nation’s best-selling compact car, with more than 330,000 sold last year.

The Hybrid is essentially a Honda Civic EX minus the moonroof, and it looks and runs pretty much like a standard Civic, except that it gets 46 to 51 miles per gallon instead of 31 to 38 miles per gallon.

J.D. Power is forecasting that Americans will be buying half a million gas-electric hybrids annually from all manufacturers in four or five years. That would account for roughly 3 percent of overall sales.

Malesh also expects there to be as many as 20 different hybrid vehicle models on the road by 2007.

"This is the wave of the future," Malesh said. "Virtually all the industry is going to go this way."

Nonetheless, there’s no guarantee fickle American car buyers will buy them, said Csaba Csere, editor-in-chief of Car and Driver magazine.

"There’s no evidence that Americans in large numbers care about fuel economy," he said. "They always answer ‘yes’ on surveys, but then buy SUVs. It’s like asking people if they want to lose weight and they say yes, but then go out and buy chicken-fried steak and fries."

For now, Honda is projecting Civic Hybrid sales of 2,000 a month for the first year. Even with that small production, Honda expects to make a profit on the cars, said John Watts, spokesman for American Honda Motor Corp. in New York.

Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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