A Honda executive told The Detroit Free Press the company planned to redesign its Civic Hybrid to make it better able to compete with the market-leading Toyota Prius. Among plans to improve competitiveness is a marked increase in its fuel economy, and, we're betting, a likely switch from its current "mild hybrid" Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system to the kind of "full hybrid" system applied to Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) — where the electric motor alone is able to drive the wheels, not just support the gas engine. With a redesigned Civic expected later this year, we're likely to see the hybrid follow in 2006.

Civic Hybrid upgrading [The Detroit Free Press]

Related:
Gas-X: CNG-Powered Honda Civic Now Available to the Public [internal]

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