Honda Announces Plug-in Hybrid and EV Commuter for 2012

Am I the only one who was a bit stunned at Honda’s announcement today? CEO Takanobu Ito outlined the company’s plans to introduce both a mid-size plug-in hybrid and an electric commuter vehicle in the U.S. and Japan by the end of 2012. He told Reuters, “It’s starting to look like there will be a market for electric vehicles. We can’t keep shooting down their potential, and we can’t say there’s no business case for it.”

So what so weird about this?

In the first place, Honda’s longstanding commitment to its current alternate fuel vehicle, the hydrogen fuel cell F6 Clarity, which, of course, is an electric vehicle; batteries and fuel cells are simply two different ways of providing portable electrical energy. Perhaps Ito simply misspoke, but that strikes me as a mistake that the CEO of Honda would be most unlikely to make.

Also, Honda’s spokespeople – in the US at least – have been fanatically careful not to “shoot down the potential” of battery EVs. I recall the words of Steve Ellis, an extremely senior fellow at Honda’s US headquarters in Torrance, CA, when I interviewed him for my book on renewables. He spent the majority of the 90-or-so minutes we were together pointing out that the proponents for battery EVs vs. fuel cell EVs should not be throwing stones at one another, as there is plenty of room for both.

I privately suspected that the company would someday develop a battery-based car in addition to the F6, as the latter has obviously been a struggle to market commercially. But let’s look at the big picture and not quibble over details. That Honda will have a plug-in hybrid and a commuter EV on the roads soon? “It’s all good,” as my kids like to say.