Recently launched City to boost Honda Thailand’s eco car sales

KUALA LUMPUR: Honda has launched the fifth-gen City in Thailand just two days ago. The new powertrain of the car now meets the country’s Phase 2 Eco Car framework, that includes criteria like CO2 emissions below 100 gm/km, Euro 5 rule, fuel consumption not surpassing 4.3-litre/100 km and several safety standards such as ABS, EBD, BA, and VSA.

The second phase of the eco car scheme was announced in 2013, following the first phase in 2007. The Thai government started the scheme 12 years back to attract car manufacturers to invest more in eco cars. Carmakers like Honda, Nissan, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, and Toyota were the major investors who also signed up for the second phase. In addition to these, Mazda also joined the class and it is now on the top position of sales chart along with Toyota.

However, according to reports, Honda somehow failed to meet the production demand in the first phase. Sales of Brio hatchback and Brio Amaze reduced to 2,132 units in 2018 from 6,195 units in 2014. Pitak Pruittisarikorn, Honda Thailand’s COO also admitted that Honda failed to meet the requirement of manufacturing 400,000 eco cars.

He said “Honda decided to end the first phase this year, so the privileges from the Board of Investment (BoI) Honda received under the first phase will be calculated on our actual output since 2011. The limited sales volume of eco cars was caused by market competition and sentiment of the six carmakers in this segment.”

To fulfil that gap in phase two, Honda has started to make new eco cars. Reportedly, this is the main reason why Honda has made City an eco car. In its previous generation, Honda City was not an eco car. The fourth-gen outgoing model comes with an i-VTEC 1.5-litre four-cylinder engine and CO2 emission was 133gm/km.

It was also subjected to an excise tax of 20%. Now the fifth-gen Honda City eco car gets a downsized three-cylinder 1.0-litre turbo engine and the CO2 emission is now 99 gm/km. Moreover, it attracts 12% excise tax - and all of these are standard as Phase 2 Eco Car framework.

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