Honda has begun rolling of its Marysville, Ohio plant assembly line the first of its 2014Accord Hybrids. The four-door sedan, which is its first hybrid produced in this state, looks as if it will carry a very impressive, EPA-rated fuel economy of 50 miles per gallon in the city.
The Japanese automaker, struggling to stay up with the extreme popularity of the Toyota Prius hybrid, can at least take pride in the fact the Accord’s city MPG “is three miles per gallon higher than the closest segment competitor and its calculated driving range of 673 miles is more than 46 miles farther than any vehicle in its segment.” Its other MPG ratings aren’t bad either, coming in at 45 MPG for highway and 47 MPG combined.
Set to go on sale later this year at Honda dealerships, the 2014 Accord Hybrid, noted Honda, combines the exterior styling and interior packaging of its regular Accord sedan with an efficient, two-motor hybrid system from its Earth Dreams Technology advanced powertrain series. It also joins a line up which includes the Accord Plug-in Hybrid, that’s rated by the EPA at 115 MPGe combined in electric only mode.
Honda seems to be taking great pride in the fact this hybrid is the first of its kind for it from Ohio, joining the Greensburg, Indiana-built Civic Hybrid as its second hybrid model built in the U.S. It invested $18.8 million in
a 94,000-square-foot expansion of the Marysville Auto Plant, along with the addition of 50 new full-time jobs to handle the special processes specific to the production of this advanced hybrid model.
Including the expansion at the Marysville Auto Plant, in the past three years Honda has invested nearly $2.7 billion in innovations to and expansion of its regional operations, it said, with more than $1 billion spent in Ohio alone. It operates 14 manufacturing facilities in this area, including seven auto plants. In 2012, more than 90 percent of its vehicles sold here were manufactured in North America using global and domestically sourced parts.
Including the investments of the last three years, Honda has now spent more than $22 billion in its North American operations.