Honda announced its new, hybrid-drive Civic would be priced $2,500 higher than the base model in Japan, making it around $18,900. Naturally, that's converted from Yen. Nonetheless, Honda boss Takeo Fukui said the premium is still too high for customers to ignore, indicating that $1,800 was the magic number the company is shooting for in the future. At that price, he says, the hybrid price stigma becomes negligible. (Sure, go ask your local bookie how negligible $1,800 is.) As for North America and Europe, the launch date is sometime early next year.
Treehugger has extensive coverage of the Civic hybrid.
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