The first hybrid car has hit Indian roads — and it’s a Honda Civic which will run on both petrol and battery power. Priced at a steep Rs 21.5 lakh, the car is powered by a 1.3-litre petrol engine and an electric motor. India is the 33rd country where Honda has launched its Civic hybrid. With crude oil projected to surge to $200 a barrel by sometime next year from the current $137 and with no commercially viable alternative fuel anywhere in sight, auto aficionados are increasingly drawn by the allure of hybrids. The Honda Civic hybrid’s biggest selling point is its fuel efficiency of 19-23km a litre — on a par with, if not better than, a Maruti Zen or a Hyundai Santro. The company said the hybrid car was 47 per cent more fuel-efficient than the petrol version. This is because the car draws on petrol or battery power, depending on the speed of the car. The battery charges on its own when the car runs on petrol.

The biggest turn-off for the customer is the price — which is more expensive than executive saloons like the Honda Accord or the Toyota Camry. Honda blames it on the high customs duty of 104 per cent that has to be paid on imports of completely built units (CBUs). In the race to produce hybrid cars, Toyota beat Honda by almost two years: the Toyota Prius debuted in 1997. The vastly improved second-generation Prius in 2003 became an instant hit, helping Japan’s top automaker win a reputation overnight as the frontrunner in green technology. But Honda is hoping to change all that. It aims to sell about 500,000 hybrids a year by 2015 -- nine times what it sold last year -- rivalling Toyota’s own goal of boosting hybrid sales to a 10th of its total sales after 2010.

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