Honda announces steep price drop for its Civic Hybrid in India
Nov 13, 2008 Auto Tech, Natural Resource Conservation
Honda Civic
Economic Times reports that Honda has just dropped the price of its Civic Hybrid by Rs.8 lacs (about $17500), only a few months after its June launch in India. All this time, the Civic Hybrid, the only hybrid available in India ( leave aside the mild hybrid Scorpio) had cost almost double the standard car. Many, who wanted to join the green bandwagon as well as loved the Civic’s racy looks, but were deterred by the price, may now well decide to buy the hybrid. The Hybrid pricing is now just Rs. 50,000 more than the automatic Civic.
Honda must be looking at long term loyalty and environmental awareness kudos, offering the environmentally-friendly sedan in an unfriendly economic environment and absorbing the full hit from the price drop. “We have taken a hit on the price to offer this eco-friendly technology to potential customers. There have been thousands of enquiries for the Hybrid, which had not culminated in actual sales,” said Honda Siel vice president Jnaneshwar Sen.
What made the hybrid Civic prohibitively expensive was the approximately 110% duties that India slaps on all imported cars — nonsensical if you ask me, in case of eco-friendly cars, especially when the domestic market is not big enough to warrant domestic production of such niche products.
All that remains to be seen is how many Civic Hybrids Honda manages to shift now, compared to the 60 till now. And will Toyota respond to this Honda challenge or will Honda take the game farther away with its Insight?
Tags: Honda, Honda Civic, Hybrid cars, India, Price cut
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