Honda Siel Cars India said, it will roll out a more environment-friendly variant of its popular sedan Civic in the next two-three months, and will also launch a small car in India by the end of this year.

“We have decided to launch 60 per cent fuel efficient Civic Hybrid in India,” HSCI President M Takedagawa told reporters at the Auto Expo here, on Thursday. Hybrid cars would be imported and cost double the current price, he said.

Explaining the rationale of high pricing of the car, Takedagawa said the import duty in the country is over 100 per cent and that would reflect on the pricing.

The car runs on a 1.3 litre petrol engine supported by electric motor and is undergoing a homologation test. The company today also launched two-litre Honda CRV at Rs 17.15 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). It plans to launch eighth generation of its premium sedan Accord by middle of this year. In order to expand its portfolio, the premier car maker also plans to enter the small car segment with launch of ‘Jazz’ by the end of next year. The new hatchback would be placed at the higher end of the B segment and would probably come out of the new plant in Rajasthan, he said.

400 cr investment

Talking about the other environment friendly initiative, Takedagawa said all models of the company would be compatible with 10 per cent ethnol blended fuel by October this year and this would be ramped up to 20 per cent ethnol blending by the end of 2008. With the entry into small car segment, the company is expecting to achieve sell 1,60,000 cars by 2010.

The company recently made an investment of Rs 400 crore to ramp up capacity to one lakh units per annum at its Greater Noida plant. Its Rajasthan plant would be operation by the end of 2009 with the initial capacity of 60,000 units per annum.

Besides, its green cars like FCX Concept and Honda Ashimo advanced humanoid robot was at the display here.