![]() ![]() For three years, from 2013 to 2015, the company sold about 1,100 units of the Accord Plug-in Hybrid. The Fit EV was not the only plug-in car produced by Honda in the early to mid-2010s. But 20 months after Matt and Becky Walton received the first Fit EV, Honda announced that it had reached its sales quota and production would end earlier than expected. The lease price was set at $389 a month and then dropped to $259, creating waiting lists at dealerships in California, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. ![]() Compared to the popular EVs at the time – the Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, and Smart ED – the Fit was the most fun to drive. When placed into Sport mode, the Fit EV’s dashboard took on a red hue and upped its output to 123 horsepower and 189 pound-feet of torque. ![]() The small yet spacious five-passenger Fit was equipped with a 20 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack providing an estimated range of 82 miles. Honda committed to making just 1,100 units over a 20-month period. It's questionable whether consumers will accept the annoyances of limited driving range and having to spend time charging them.”Īgainst a background of rising fuel-economy standards, Honda unveiled an all-electric version of the Honda Fit at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. Tomohiko Kawanabe, Honda’s president of research and development, in 2010 said: "We are definitely conducting research on electric cars, but I can’t say I can wholeheartedly recommend them. By 2008, a couple of dozen California consumers were leasing the hydrogen-powered car.ĮV development was still simmering in the background. Honda introduced the FCX Clarity fuel-cell sedan in 2006. The company’s shift from EVs to hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles became the strategy for the ensuing decades. The real question, if we were to keep selling the EV Plus, would be, ‘Are we moving forward? Are we advancing the technology?’ And the answer would be ‘I think not.’''Ĭompared to the limited production numbers for its first EV, Honda said that it would sell 5,000 Insights worldwide every year. “It was not meant to be mass-market material. “We had limited production goals in mind from the beginning for EV Plus,” said Robert Bienenfeld, manager of alternative fuel vehicles sales and marketing for American Honda Motor Co. The company reclaimed and eventually destroyed its first EV. On April 26, 1999, Automotive News reported that Honda had produced its last EV Plus and the “arrival this fall of Honda's VV hybrid car hastened the end of EV Plus production in Japan.” The VV was the concept version of the Honda Insight hybrid. But with California regulators allowing hybrids to get ZEV credits, the pressure was off to sell a pure EV. Honda produced and leased a couple hundred more EV Pluses in the following two years in California – and a handful in Japan and Europe. However, 1998 California was already loosening its zero-emissions targets to include hybrids. Nonetheless, Honda found more than 100 customers in 1997, one year ahead of the California mandate’s deadline. The EV Plus’s surprising sticker price was $53,900, but Honda would only allow the car to be leased – at $455 a month for three years. The four-passenger compact was about a foot longer than today’s BMW i3 and 1,000 pounds heavier. Power was modest at 66 horsepower and a top speed of about 80 miles per hour. ![]() gave the Honda EV Plus a range rating of 81 miles – an achievement for the era. “But I can definitely sense the coming age of the EV.” “There still are many issues at hand, including the battery,” said Kenji Matsumoto, head of the company's development project. The cameras captured a single small unit of the EV Plus rolling off the line. In April 1997, newspaper reporters and television crews assembled at Takanezawa plant, Honda’s manufacturing facility for specialized small production runs. Concerned about the durability of lead-acid batteries, Honda took the bold step of using nickel-metal hydride batteries, the first car company to make the switch.īased on 80,000 miles of real-world testing, Honda’s president Nobuhiko Kawamoto gave the go-ahead in January 1996 to create an original body design for Honda’s EV. A total of 10 cars were put on California roads for testing. That was followed by the CUV-4, an electric conversion of a Civic. ![]()
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