Although Toyota began selling the first mass-produced hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) that have an electric motor working with a petrol engine, Honda also brought HEVs into the market around the same time. In fact, in Malaysia, Honda was the first to actually market HEVs when it offered the Civic Hybrid in 2004, priced at RM118,888. Back then, hybrids were still a novelty rather than something which drew people due to being new technology.

Over the years, Honda Malaysia continued to promote HEVs, offering the technology in some models and then being the first brand to assemble a HEV locally – the Jazz Hybrid – in 2012. Incentives provided by the government during that period were intended to promote HEVs so that more people would buy the environment-friendly cars. In fact, the incentives created the unusual situation whereby a HEV variant cost less than the variants with just petrol engines – in every other market, HEVs would cost more than their conventional engine equivalents due to the additional cost of the technology.

Although sales of HEVs have not been rocketing upwards, they have been steadily increasing and the technology has also matured and is more efficient, while costs have lowered. Since the days of the first Insight, it has been Honda’s aim to find ways to lower the costs of its hybrid technology – which it markets as e:HEV now – so that more people can afford to buy HEVs.