#2021 honda accord hybrid manual

The latest 2021 Accord Hybrid I’ve been testing perfectly illustrates Honda’s modest commitment to hybrids. Honda has spent little time and energy, or even creativity, in promoting its hybrids, which is one reason why Toyota has sold more than five times as many hybrids over the past two decades. This is nowhere near as sophisticated a solution as Toyota’s Prius-based hybrid technology, though. In fact, Honda’s solution is elegant in its simplicity: an electric motor is mounted between the internal combustion engine (ICE) and the transmission to provide oomph and improve fuel economy. All of them used a different version of Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system, rather than reflect the kind of wholesale hybrid engineering commitment we’ve seen at Toyota. There was the Honda Civic Hybrid (2001 to 2015) the original Honda Accord Hybrid (2005 to 2007) and the Honda CR-Z (2010 to 2016). Honda, of course, will tell you that in the last 20 yeas, its engineers have been “perfecting” the hybrid powertrain.

Seems to me, Honda has realized that it’s way behind in the race to electrify the automobile, and has therefore hitched a ride with GM. With Honda on board in the alliance led by GM, some of the larger American company’s EV investment will be offset by Honda’s participation. GM plans to launch 20 EVs globally by 2023 and says Cadillac, its lead EV brand, will have a fully electric lineup within the decade. Therefore, last year Honda and General Motors announced an agreement on EVs and other “green” vehicle technologies that appears to allow Honda to piggy-back on GM’s previously announced US$20 billion plan for EV and autonomous vehicle development through 2025. This has become a big problem for Honda, now that the world is becoming electrified. I think Honda has long though battery cars were a fad and not worth much serious bother. Honda has never really seemed committed to electrified vehicles of any sort, other than, perhaps, a passing interest in hydrogen fuel cells. Honda, a mid-sized auto company by global standards, has always a small-engine company with a chip on its shoulder and contrarian sensibilities. Even now, Toyota is being dragged kicking and screaming into the pure battery electric car world, finally conceding that hybrids aren’t enough of a bridge to hydrogen fuel cell cars. What started with the Toyota Prius as long ago as 1997 (first sold in Canada in 1999) has spawned millions and millions in hybrid sales worldwide. Toyota has based its entire electrification plan on gasoline-electric powertrains. Honda’s problem has been a lack of commitment to a formal hybrid strategy, along the lines of Toyota, its larger Japanese rival. Not that any of Honda’s various hybrid forays have been terrible it’s just that none have been brilliant, either. Since then, Honda’s hybrid story has been something of a stop-start-stop-try-again-what-are-we-doing travesty.

#2021 honda accord hybrid manual

That Insight’s fuel efficiency was brilliant (4.4 litres/100 km) but the car itself was a visual catastrophe, one further burdened by a cheap interior, a primitive manual gearbox and the driving manners of high school science experiment. Honda has been dithering about with hybrids since at least the ugly ducking Insight – a two-door masterpiece of function over form – that went on sale in North America in 1999.