Honda's hybrid future

As of late, Honda hasn't really made many public statements regarding its vision for hybrids. While Honda has been a leader in hybrid car development with its Insight, Civic hybrid, and Accord hybrid, it has been much less vocal on the subject than most major automakers

Of course, the success of Honda has declined a bit in recent years, as both the Civic and the Accord have lost marketshare. So, where is Honda going with its hybrid endeavors?

Laurent Aebi, a product specialist at Honda, largely focusing on fuel cell vehicles, told an audience at the Geneva Auto Show, "Diesel is popular in Europe, clearly, but it's a short-term trend, I give it another 10 years maximum. After that it will be the hybrid car."

Still, Aebi thinks that hybrids will also be a short-term trend. "But both the diesel car and the hybrid car are a transition as we head to fuel cell cars or pure electric cars."

The idea of the hybrid as a transition is common in the auto industry, except for Toyota, which believes that fuel cell cars will be hybrids.

Ultimately, the point is, to make hybrid cars cost effective compared to conventional cars, higher levels of production will be required. At this point in time only Toyota appears either interested, or prepared, to achieve such production levels.