[Durango Dude]

Asking for a Rs 4 L premium up front for just fuel efficiency and 200Ltr contracted boot space is very "tall" gearing for a City What ever be the tech it's not happening period, there's nothing remotely that can make the "hybrid" stand out from the "ordinary" City. I knew this would happen as Honda have got themselves into a "fix" by selling the present and previous generations of the City. Something like the Camry Hybrid that retails for some Rs 45 L ex showroom and at the price point it won't sell much so will this City hybrid it will not sell much, unless the Gumment reduces it's "pound of flesh" it's extracting from the sale. In fact the Dunces in Delhi must be subsidizing the petrol hybrid than the "plug in hybrid" which would be the right thing to do. To me it feels like "Gouge pricing" with severely contracted "boot space".

[Redline6800]

Gotta feel for Honda here, they have so successfully taken their own brand downmarket, that premium pricing just won't work.

There was a time when customers paid a premium for Honda cars but that time is long gone.

I say all this as a diehard Honda fan (we have a 1st gen City, Brio, Activa and CB350).

Takes real talent to destroy three goldplated models in the City, Civic and CR-V.

I don't even see many customers walking into their showrooms to check out the hybrid City. Rs22 lakh on road would have been ideal, but in Bangalore this vehicle will now be close to 23.5L approx. The ADAS is also going to be a giant pain for older chauffeur driven customers as well.

If the Hybrid City can get to monthly sales of 200 units till the end of the year, then that will be an achievement in itself.

Honda really should have priced this on par with the Slavia/Virtus 1.5 DSG top end, atleast then people would have walked into showrooms to compare.

[Nav-i-gator]

Can't comment on the prices, but in terms of fuel efficiency (without compromising on performance), this might be a worthy upgrade for people looking to buy top end Petrol CVT model at least. My City 5th Gen CVT gives a pathetic 9 KMPL within city drives. Highway FE is a healthy 17-18 KMPL though. Given most of the daily use we have is within city limits, a mileage of 20+KMPL is stellar for a car essentially driven on petrol.

I really wish this car to sell in good numbers. Really not a fan of going straight to pure EV from ICE cars. Hybrid tech need to be mainstream.

[rajshenoy]

Would have loved if Honda managed a on road price of around 20L but then it is Honda.

[volkman10]

Official Release:

The New City e:HEV is available in a single flagship grade ZX in five exciting colors – Radiant Red Metallic, Platinum White Pearl, Meteoroid Grey Metallic, Golden Brown Metallic and Lunar Silver Metallic.

In another first for HCIL, the Advanced Hybrid Electric Vehicle New City e:HEV will be manufactured in India at its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Tapukara, Rajasthan. The company will begin the deliveries of the model from its dealer network across the country immediately after the launch.

The New City e:HEV will offer complete peace of mind with 3-year Unlimited kilometers warranty as standard benefit to the customer. The customers can also opt for Extended Warranty up to 5 years and Anytime Warranty up to 10 years from the date of car purchase. The warranty available on Lithium-ion Battery will be 8-year or 1 60 000 Km (whichever comes first) from the date of car purchase.





Link

[sunikkat]

The challenge for Honda is who will be the target customers for the hybrid model with this pricing?

1) A cost conscious customer? - With the price difference with normal city, will they really be interested in Hybrid as break even is nearly impossible in the useful life of car.
2) Honda loyalist? - Again they can get almost same city (looks, features and performance wise) for much lesser money
3) Someone with a budget of 25 lakhs? - Most people with that budget might as well look for cars which are a segment above City. Other than Hybrid and ADAS technology there is nothing much that stand out in City Hybrid

So only a very few customers who want Hybrid, ADAS etc. will look for this. For vast majority, this would only be another City without much cost benefit and a much lesser boot space. Honda is really going to have a tough time selling this (hope I am proven wrong).

[saisree]

Honda site is updated. Price starts at Rs 19,49,900/-

[souvikjana83]

It will be more than 2 lakh kms before the Hybrid can break even with the normal ZX CVT. And more so if one compares with lower versions with the normal CVT. Even normal Honda City in general sell very less in numbers. I don't see anyone paying this much amount. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever for majority of the people. The car flopped on launch. What are people at Honda smoking??

[shivmarwaha]

After this launch, suddenly the Honda city V CVT seems to be value for money. Could this be a strategy to push sales of lower end versions of the city. Probably they know from the start that hybrid at this price will not have too many takers.

[W16rocks]

I would like to share my point of view as my father owns a Honda City V MT 2018, I believe the price difference is justified I believe the price difference for Hybrid is 3 lacs as the rest is for the ADAS system(which is a plus point).
As our car gives a mileage of 10-11 kmpl at that cost some calculations:-
Petrol price Pune: 120 rs
Monthly running: 1000 kms
Mileage: 10 kmpl
Monthly costs: 12000 rs

For the Hybrid city the costs would be 1/2, around 6000 Rs saving per month which translates to 72000 Rs a year.
Plus the saving of no transmission fluid as there are no gears add 5000 to savings.

I suppose In Four year the extra price paid would be evened out, and this calculation is for a person who drives only 1000 kms a month for double the kilometres the benefits would also double, a person who keeps the car for say 6 years would have savings of around 2 lacs in that time period.

Compared to other carmaker’s who don’t consider India important enough to bring in such tech(eyes at you Hyundai), I would like to applaud Honda for taking the initiative to launch such products in our market, I hope more manufacturers follow this example.

Also I believe ADAS feature are a first in any sedan<75 lacs which justifies the price paid as adaptive cruise control is a boon on indian expressway and Highway.

My father was dissatisfied with the 5 gen city as not much was different from our 4 gen hence did not even think buying it, but with this launch he is enthusiastic and wants to test drive this car as soon as possible.

W16Rocks

[yaleen]

I did have a question on the battery life. Since the car is getting recharged almost constantly from the ICE engine, will this cause any deterioration in the battery performance over time? I know in EVs, they say will cause lowering of range by 10-15% over 8 years period (warranty period). Would this smaller battery go through the discharge cycles earlier?

Wondering if that needs to be factored into the cost when people are comparing running costs. Since over time, if battery running does come down, ICE engine may get fired much more at lower speeds to charge the battery leading to lower mileage numbers.

[MiKeMo]

₹4.5L premium seems high for sure. After reading review on our forum, I seem to like the car.
My use case is 70km daily in heavy Mumbai traffic, so hybrid or EV helps. However my foremost requirement is full size boot, for 600 to 1000km ride once or twice a month.
City at this premium and just 300ltr boot size is almost a deal breaker! I'm really confused about my next car with every passing day, and every new car hitting Indian roads

On break even calculations, keeping things simple, users with more than 20k annual city running should find this car worthwhile. Here's my back of the envelope calculations :
Petrol City: 12kmpl
Hybrid City: 24kmpl
At 120/ltr petrol price and 20000km running, cost saving is ₹1 lac per annum.
Cheers!

[audioholic]

Had missed all the price related action and now dont regret it. I yawned after looking at the sticker price. People might try to justify paying the premium for this car all day, but thats only as long as you stay within the Honda showroom. For such a premium, I would have expected the older Hybrid system with its DCT for regular driving along with hybrid mode. The i-MMD was introduced just to reduce cost and complexity with respect to having a full fledged transmission and instead, avoid the transmission altogether, liberating cost, space in the engine bay for packing. But Honda seems to have injected some confidence inducing drug into its employees to price it like this. I really wanted to consider this car as an alternate option, but I am sure after the initial euphoria wore out, I would be bored of its performance and only be happy about not going to the fuel bunk regularly. But for the sort of usage I have, I so far havent felt the pinch of fuel bills. So this car isnt for me. If it was priced at par with the Slavia DSG, that would have meant some competition especially for the general buyer who considers both cars as a means of transport. Here the FE advantage of city would have stood out.

Originally Posted by Vid6639

Also, we both asked Honda why not launch a model without ADAS. The Hybrid is a perfect city commuter but most of the ADAS tech works only on highways above 72km/hr except for collision mitigation braking system. 1.5L - 2L lesser price tag without ADAS would have hit the sweet spot.

Originally Posted by Vid6639

No idea whats the actual cost of ADAS system but take a look at what is involved:

1. Camera
2. high performance computing to process the data and take decisions
3. brake actuation without pedal pressure (needs electronic control vs manual hydraulic)
4. steering control without driver inputs. Needs a system that will steer the car without driver inputs
5. all sorts of sensors to monitor the parameters
6. underlying software

None of these components you list actually have to be different apart from the camera itself. Such camera only systems are offered as a boxed solution where the manufacturer implements everything within the camera and that is installed in the vehicle. The rest is done via regular vehicle network and as long as the car has an ESP on it, it can brake and accelerate on its own without the need of additional hardware. Same with the EPS. The camera will communicate with ESP and EPS and control the car.

The ADAS setup in the City wont even cost 50k. Forget 2L premium or saving without it. Its an elementary camera only system which cant be compared to what Mahindra or MG offer with camera and radar combos. And not even they charge such high premiums especially the Astor even having corner radars which the XUV doesnt have. The Honda Sensing system is just provided as an eyewash to tell people there is something more than the regular ZX.

Originally Posted by amalji

With regards to camera vs RADAR, it might not be as simple as that. To put things in perspective, Tesla ditched RADAR based ADAS for the camera based systems for all their future offerings.

You cant compare what Tesla does with cameras, that too not just one camera to an externally sourced one-box solution in the Honda. Of course camera technology has evolved well at least for the basic ADAS offerings that they can eliminate the radar, but for a good system which you can practically use without getting annoyed, one camera is not enough.

Originally Posted by gauravdgr8

You get Diesel, higher ground clearance but a lesser mileage in the XUV and Harrier. The higher fuel cost on the Honda is compensated due to the Hybrid setup, with almost double the mileage.

With the Harrier you also get greater number of visits to the service center, a few trips on the flatbed and a placeholder for a thread on TBHP for these issues The Honda on the other hand will bore you with its reliability and refinement, as well as long term ageing.

Originally Posted by CR07

Add to this, an annual service cost saving of about 5K. So a 30K saving per year is too low IMO. You will require about 15 years to recover this cost.

Originally Posted by W16rocks

Plus the saving of no transmission fluid as there are no gears add 5000 to savings.

These things on the maintenance part is just absurd. The car is not a pure EV. It will still require engine oil changes, air filters, coolant replacement, brake fluid and what not. Transmission fluid in current day transmission is replaced quite rarely, like at least 40k kms between replacements. I wonder how that can be called a saving.

[W16rocks]

Originally Posted by audioholic

These things on the maintenance part is just absurd. The car is not a pure EV. It will still require engine oil changes, air filters, coolant replacement, brake fluid and what not. Transmission fluid in current day transmission is replaced quite rarely, like at least 40k kms between replacements. I wonder how that can be called a saving.

Due to the car not having a transmission, the service costs go down also brake disks would wear less due to regenerative braking system in place. Also the radar systems are not proven as being more effective against the camera based ones, also there is enough evidence that may prove that Honda’s system is better than the radar based ones.

[amalji]

Originally Posted by audioholic

You cant compare what Tesla does with cameras, that too not just one camera to an externally sourced one-box solution in the Honda. Of course camera technology has evolved well at least for the basic ADAS offerings that they can eliminate the radar, but for a good system which you can practically use without getting annoyed, one camera is not enough.

The bigger point is that using camera instead of Radar doesn't necessarily imply an inferior technology compared to Radar. The reason why I brought in Tesla's plan as an example was just to prove the point that Radar vs Camera is not as simple a comparison as "Radar ADAS is better than camera ADAS". That was the intend of the statement and NOT to say that Honda's ADAS is comparable to Tesla.

Honda themselves claims that their new single camera setup is superior to the Radar + Camera ADAS that they used to have before.

Quoting the relevant lines from the article.

Honda said the 11th-generation Civic recently introduced will have a new version of Honda Sensing that uses a new single-camera system with a faster processor in place of the former camera-and-radar based system.

The single camera provides “a wider field of detection” than the previous system, Honda said. “Combined with software advances and a new, more powerful processor, the system is also capable of more quickly and accurately identifying pedestrians, bicyclists and other vehicles, along with road lines and road signs,” Honda said.