Honda Comes on Strong at Product-Palooza Press Conference

DETROIT – Honda will try again with a dedicated hybrid vehicle, but there’s no saying at this point if it will bear the Insight name.

Insight might or might not work the third time around. However a Honda executive declines to get into that while speaking with journalists on the sidelines after the automaker’s product-palooza of a press conference at the North American International Auto Show.

“We haven’t announced naming on it, so we’ll see as we go forward” says John Mendel, American Honda’s executive vice president-automotive division.

Asked if it’s at least possible the new plug-in electric vehicle, due out in 2018, will carry the un-legendary name of the Insight hybrid, he replies, “Anything’s possible.”

Honda has stumbled twice with two generations of Insight, a hybrid introduced in the U.S. in 1999, seven months ahead of Toyota’s first-generation Prius.

The Prius became a hit, the Insight failed there. Annual sales fell below 1,000 units in the 2000s.

Honda pulled the plug on the first-generation Insight in 2006, came out with a second-generation model three years later and ended production of that in 2014.

Calling 2015 the “Year of Honda,” Mendel at his Detroit auto show presentation goes down a long list of upcoming products, both automotive and non-automotive.

Those include the name-to-come hybrid, an all-electric vehicle (also scheduled to debut in 2018), a second-generation fuel-cell concept vehicle and HondaJet, a new private airplane.

A large scale model of the plane shares the Honda stage. “We couldn’t land a real one on Jefferson Avenue,” Mendel quips, referring to the roadway in front of Cobo Center, the site of the show.

Also shown at the Honda press conference is the UNI-CUB personal mobility device that a rider steers by leaning this way and that.  

Plus, Mendel’s offers information on Honda motorcycles and the automaker’s return to Formula One racing.

It’s all done to showcase the brand’s prowess, Mendel says. “No other automaker in the world has the depth of R&D know-how and experience to create such a diverse array of advanced-technology products, let alone bring them to market.”

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