Honda wants better deal for hybrids
June 12, 2008 by Alborz Fallah
Following the recent announcement from Toyota to build a hybrid Camry, Honda is feeling a little lost in the limelight of its bigger Japanese rival, so Honda Australia has today issued a press release urging the State and Federal Governments to be true ‘green partners’ and support hybrid cars in meaningful and practical ways.
Honda Australia’s Senior Director Mr. Lindsay Smalley said in a statement that “the time is right to establish incentives for people to purchase hybrid vehicles”. He believes more can be done by the State and Federal governments to promote hybrid cars.
So far Honda has only sold 2,363 hybrid Civics since 2004, the majority to private buyers.
“Honda calls for initiatives from both State and Federal Governments that would assist Australians who want to reduce their carbon footprint and fuel usage. As with any new technology, it will take time for hybrids to be widely accepted. Honda believes abolishing Federal import tariffs and cutting stamp duty and registration on hybrid vehicles would greatly assist their presence on our roads and give consumers a wider choice of hybrid motoring options.” Mr. Smalley said.
The Honda Civic Hybrid manages a fuel economy figure of 4.6 litres per 100 kilometres (which is easily beaten by many small German diesels) but puts out only 109 grams of CO2 per kilometer.
Honda is going one step further though, in partnership with Greenfleet, every Civic Hybrid sold receives Australia’s first Climate Care warranty, which means over the first three years of the vehicle’s life, 18 trees will be planted, making the first three years of motoring carbon neutral!
Print it: 
“Honda believes abolishing Federal import tariffs and cutting stamp duty and registration on hybrid vehicles would greatly assist their presence on our roads”
Your presence would most certainly be more noticed Mr Honda if you made the Civic Hybrid ugly (like the Insight and the Prius). It seems that Uber-efficient cars will only get the ‘green’ light from our easily woo’d pollies if they look like they are from an episode of the Jetson’s. It’s all about the wow-factor and nobody wants to spend the extra money being enviro-conscious if the uninitiated cant tell without reading the badge.
Oh wow Climate Care warranty, 18 trees in 3 years, no way man, that has got to be the best warranty ever lol! Who cares about 3 year 150,000km warranty when you get THE Climate Care warranty! That’s it, I am going straight to a Honda dealer to buy one! lol
They can’t seriously expect people to buy such butt ugly car anyway! They may reduce CO2 now, but what happens when their batteries turn future waste land into toxic land fills?
“Honda believes abolishing Federal import tariffs and cutting stamp duty and registration on hybrid vehicles would greatly assist their presence on our roads”
Abolishing import tariffs on ALL cars I say. And whilst we are at it, we should drop that other protectionist tariff we have on our cars known as the ADR (australian Design Rules). Lose the ADRs imposition just adopt the Japanese or US ones – few less beaurocrats, cheaper cars!
By the way – I think both the Aust $35m grant to Toyota and the special treatment proposals from Honda are bulls**t. If they want to incentivise “Green” they should pay it based upon the output measure (vehicle’s carbon emissions?) and not do what pollies always do with new technology and try to pick/support what they think to be the winning technology.
Well I don’t feel sorry for Honka Hybrids, the can all get lost in my opinion..
DIESEL AND LPG IS BETTER BY A MILE !!!!!!!!!
they can ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ typo
Perhaps if Honda want a better deal they should invest some of their hard earned money here and build a factory and employ more than just salespeople and executives. Who on earth would want to subsidise an imported car? Whether you love them or hate them, at least toyota is going to build them here.
Try checking out the Drive $marter Challenge (www.drivesmarterchallenge.org). You can enter your specific vehicle data and figure out how much money you can save my taking six fuel-efficiency steps. They also provide other fuel-efficiency tips to help you save on gas costs.