Thanks to fairly damp sales, Honda is going to stop selling the Insight hybrid, which competes with Toyota’s Prius 5-door hatchback. The Insight started life as the first hybrid automobile (as a two-door coupe) in the US, went on hiatus for between 2006 and 2009 and reemerged as a larger Prius competitor. The automaker has 237 days worth of stockpiled cars and has stopped taking orders.
Accounting for less than one tenth of Prius sales, the less efficient and more expensive Insight is not the only car to be axed; the CR-Z coupe will also be axed, but the fate of Honda’s participation in this second segment is potentially brighter. Honda has asserted in a discussion with Autoblog, that “The fates of Insight and CR-Z are not necessarily intertwined as they are very different models with very different missions. Moving forward, our hybrid vehicle strategy will focus on new hybrid models featuring expanded application of our innovative two-motor hybrid system with an eye toward significant volume growth.” In other words, one could expect to see more hybrids come out of Honda, just not in hybrid-specific body styles.
-By: Sawyer Sutton
Source: Autoblog