Report: Honda Canada discontinuing Insight and Civic hybrid

Filed under: Hybrid, Honda

It’s no secret the revived 2010 Honda Insight has been a huge sales disappointment in North America. The once-robust sales of the Civic hybrid have also evaporated in the last two years. Apparently, things are far worse for Honda’s hybrids north of the border, where higher fuel prices typically cause people to buy more efficient vehicles, than they are in the U.S.

An unconfirmed report from a Canadian web site indicates that both the Civic hybrid and the Insight are being discontinued there. Checking the Canadian sales charts, the Civic as a whole is one of the top-selling cars with 31,604 units sold in 2010 through July. While hybrid sales are not broken out by Honda Canada, we can do a little educated guessing. Since only 643 of those Civic sales were imports and the hybrids come from Japan, we can figure that those 643 were the hybrid models. Similarly, Canadians only bought 748 Insights in the same period. When it launched, Honda projected 10,000 annual sales in Canada. Evidently Canadians just aren’t taken with hybrids – even the mighty Prius has only found 2,272 Canadian buyers this year.

Honda hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment on the cancellation of these two models. Apparently, Honda Canada will proceed with the launch of sales of the CR-Z, maybe leaving it as the company’s only hybrid. A tip of the hat to Mario!

[Source: Monvolant]

Report: Honda Canada discontinuing Insight and Civic hybrid originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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