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Honda EV-STER Concept Brings a Sports Car Back to Honda's Lineup    

At this year's Tokyo Motor Show, Honda unveiled the EV-STER concept, an electric rear-wheel-drive two-seater convertible sports car. According to the latest reports the concept is headed to production.

Honda CEO Takanobu Ito recently spoke with Auto Motor und Sport, in which he revealed that the roadster could be launched with either electric or gasoline powertrains. The concept is powered by a 78 horsepower electric motor with lithium-ion batteries and has a range of 100 miles on a single charge. According to the German magazine, the production version of the EV-STER could arrive as early as next year.

Suzuki now third in Japanese Car Market

For the first time ever, Suzuki is in third place in the Japanese domestic automotive market trailing behind Toyota and Nissan, overtaking Honda for combined sales of light commercial vehicles and passenger cars. As per the financial daily Nikkei Shimbun, Suzuki sold 587,874 passenger cars and commercial vehicles, behind Toyota (1,417,984) and Nissan (670,096) and ahead of Honda (581,249) and Daihatsu (524,381) between January and October 2006.

  So what made this possible? Despite the Japanese econominc recovery, regular car sales are going down. However it is interesting to note that there is a boom of mini car or kei car in Japan now. These are low cost tiny cars limited to 660 cc engines. Suzuki, Daihatsu and Mitsubishi are the only three companies producing kei cars at the present. Kei cars now account for 35% of unit sales in Japan? 6 million a year car market. A new kei car costs around one million yen ($9000). These mini cars are cheaper to produce and also receive tax benefits from the government. Japanese people do not want to pay more for luxurious cars nowadays as they look at cars as a normal commodity. As Suzuki is the leader in Kei cars, its domestic sales overtook Honda making it the third best automaker in Japanese domestic market now. Suzuki? success in other countries such as India, Pakistan and Hungary is also due to the low cost mini cars it produces there. Next year Suzuki will launch a compact MPV (minivan) based on the Splash concept shown at the recent Paris motor show.

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