CR-Z hybrid and the irrational exuberance of America
Perfect for every day commuters.
A bad omen for plug-ins?
As the Honda CR-Z hybrid makes it way to dealerships, a number of reviewers have remarked how unappreciated will be Honda’s latest hybrid. It’s just not made for Americans.
In a market defined by waste, the CR-Z hybrid just makes too much sense.
“Look around at rush hour and count the number of cars with a second person,” suggests Scott Burgess of the DetroitNews today.
Unfortunately, continues Burgess, the “CR-Z cannot answer all of the extreme situations of what ifs so many consumers seem to ask: What if it snows? What if I buy a boat and need to tow it? What if two of my Facebook friends actually want to meet me in person and they both need a ride? At the same time?”
Quite simply, Americans want more than they need, and they demand it.
Despite the fact that most commutes rarely, if ever, use the passenger seat, let alone the back seat, Americans demand a minimum of 5-passenger seating.
Similarly, EV advocates will claim that 90 percent of commutes can be covered by the EV range of today’s battery technology. While I believe that to be an overly simplistic statistic, let’s just say it is true. For Americans, 90 percent isn’t good enough, it has to be good for 200 percent. An automobile has to do everything currently needed from a vehicle, plus all kinds of things consumers might one day do.
Yet, I’d argue that Burgess has missed the boat a little. For half the price of a CR-Z, commuters could buy something as small as the CR-Z, and accomplish their commuting task almost as enjoyably. Sure, it might be a little less fuel efficient, but not $10,000 less efficient, or even more staggering, $20,000 or $30,000 less efficient than a plug-in vehicle. Even better, I’d bet that something even more efficient than the CR-Z could be achieved for half the price, as long as consumers were driven by logic.
Ultimately, it isn’t just the US auto consumer that makes no sense, nor even the US auto industry, it’s America – from “we the people” to the White House. When it comes to US consumerism, Americans are simply irrationally exuberant, and our biggest Achilles heal is the automobile.
Until logic is an easy sell to Americans, hybrid cars and plug-in vehicles will make for great marketing and political sound bites, plus lots of stimulus money, but they’ll offer little change when it comes to CO2 emissions or oil dependence.
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It’s hard to argue against your points carguy. I’ve never been a big fan of the IMA. If all Honda’s came with this mild hybrid system I’d be much more open, at least in the interim.
While I don’t think Honda added a lot here, I am happy to see hybrids spread into as many niches and segments as possible.
Besides being poorly conceived and like many new honda products it has questionable styling–it suffers from the fact that Honda’s IMA system is an outdated poor performing system. And to make matters worse, apparently, at least in the Civic hybrids, the batteries may be subject to premature failure (the jury is still out on whether the CR-Z will be plagued with this problem). A sport hybrid, at least as Honda designed it, makes no sense and delivers very little in the sport department.
Honda should have just forego the hybrid powertrain in this car.
Sorry, should have been IS rated at 38 City / 53 Hwy…
http://www.honda.co.uk/cars/cr-z/fullspecification
And here’s the problem. This is a dumbed down version of the CR-Z on offer in the UK, which i rated at 38 City / 53 Hwy.
The CR-Z that will be offered in the States gets similar mileage ratings to the 2005 Civic…
Yet, this crappy little hybrid still offers some of the best fuel economy you can buy in the US.
Go to Autobloggreen and you’ll see a huge attack on this car. People are spewing vitriol hate towards this car because it’s not giving them EXACTLY what they want…a boat that gets 50MPG.
I do agree that Honda could have easily put this car into the high 40MPG range of vehicles if they improved their IMA system…there’s no doubt about that. But what people fail to understand that this is a step in the right direction and frankly the general population can do NOTHING to make things turn faster in the corporate decision making world.
BUT we can make things go slower and these same corporations are only too happy to oblige by making bigger, fatter, more inefficient cars for the mainstream stupid Americans.
If I were a Honda executive and read all the hate regarding this car, I’d be saying inside that “SCREW these people…let’s give them less efficient, more wasteful cars because it’s going to end up being cheaper for us.”
Welcome to GM and Ford and Chrysler…