Honda to Forgo Use of Ethanol as Fuel

Honda Motor Co. doesn’t plan to add cars and trucks that can run on ethanol fuel, focusing instead on diesel- and hydrogen-powered vehicles as alternatives to gasoline models.

“We’re not against it,” Honda’s Torrance-based U.S. sales chief John Mendel said of developing so-called flex-fuel vehicles that can use an 85% ethanol mix. “In the list of priorities right now, we haven’t moved it up the list. It is less efficient from a fuel-economy standpoint.”

Toyota Motor Corp. in July said it might soon add ethanol-fuel models. That came after General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler’s Chrysler said they would double the number of ethanol and bio-diesel vehicles they build to at least 2 million by 2010.

Ethanol, made from corn and other crops, is touted by the automakers and corn producers as a way to help the U.S. use less imported oil.

Honda is rated by the U.S. government as having the most fuel-efficient fleet of cars and light trucks. Honda has said that by 2009 it will sell the first diesel car clean enough to be sold in all 50 U.S. states, with fuel economy as much as a third higher than gasoline-engine models.

That program and work on hydrogen and natural-gas vehicles are better uses of Honda’s resources, Mendel said.

“Out of the 170,000 U.S. filling stations, you can only get ethanol at about 700 pumps,” said Eric Fedewa of consulting firm CSM Worldwide. “Honda’s position reflects reality of the availability of the fuel.”

Critics of the E85 ethanol fuel say it is costly and energy-intensive to make and offers about 30% less range per gallon than gasoline. Automakers that sell such vehicles get federal credits to help meet fuel-economy standards.

Tokyo-based Honda exceeds the U.S. fuel-economy standards with a combined rating of 28.3 miles a gallon for its cars and light trucks, the Environmental Protection Agency said in its annual fuel-efficiency report last month.