Acura Estimates Hybrid ILX Compact Will Get 38 MPG on Highways
February 08, 2012, 2:20 PM ESTBy Tim Higgins
Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Honda Motor Co., aiming for a 20 percent increase in U.S. sales this year, said it expects the hybrid version of the Acura ILX compact sedan to get 38 miles per gallon in highway driving.
Honda is seeking to revive the luxury brand and attract younger buyers with the ILX. It will start from between $25,000 and $30,000, said Lee DaSilva, a product planner. Almost a quarter of the 40,000 ILX sedans the company plans to sell each year will be hybrids, he said. Equipped with a 1.5-liter engine, it will be Acura’s first gasoline-electric auto.
“Everybody cares about fuel costs,” Michael Accavitti, Honda’s vice president of U.S. marketing, said in an interview in Chicago in advance of tomorrow’s auto show. “I don’t care how much money you make.”
The ILX will arrive in U.S. showrooms early this year with three powertrain options: a 2-liter engine with an automatic transmission; a sportier 2.4-liter, manual-transmission model; and the hybrid. The ILX will be built at Honda’s Greensburg, Indiana, plant, which makes Civic compacts. It will be the first hybrid the Tokyo-based carmaker has assembled in the U.S.
The hybrid version is estimated to get 35 mpg in city driving and 38 mpg on the highway, Acura said in a statement.
DaSilva said Honda aims to keep the price tag “well below” $30,000. That’s important because younger buyers “are coming to grips with maybe having less than their parents,” he said.
Honda, Japan’s third-largest automaker, had a 6.8 percent sales decline in the U.S., its biggest market, last year, as natural disasters in Japan and Thailand disrupted production, causing inventory shortages. It aims for a 20 percent increase this year, President Takanobu Ito said last month in Detroit.
--With assistance from Alan Ohnsman. Editors: Jamie Butters, Terje Langeland
To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Higgins in Chicago at thiggins21@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jamie Butters at jbutters@bloomberg.net
