Honda Motor Co. plans to launch a small car by 2009 that uses a new “affordable” gas-electric hybrid engine as well as diesel-powered versions of its larger vehicles as part of a strategy to improve fuel-efficiency of its U.S. models, a senior company executive said Thursday.
Tetsuo Iwamura, head of Honda’s U.S. sales and marketing unit, said the company could tweak its plans depending on what kind of alternative fuel technologies U.S. consumers embrace and what kind of new legal requirements on average corporate fuel economy the U.S. government puts in place.
