It shouldn't be surprising that Honda has discontinued the Accord Hybrid. The car never lived up to expectations and the design philosophy differed from that of the Prius and even other Honda hybrids, which put performance ahead of mileage improvements as a selling point.
The Accord's hybrid didn't significantly increase the mileage, but was used to supplement horsepower without any loss in mileage.
The price tag may also have had something to do with it: the MSRP was $31,090. Only one trim level was available.
The car compared unfavorably to the other Accords - the EX-V6 provided virtually the same level of performance and had more cargo room, while the LX base automatic provided nearly comparable mileage to the hybrid for nearly $10,000 less (with the same cargo space as the EX-V6).
The comparison in mileage (city/highway), followed by horsepower:
Accord EX-V6 - 20/29, 244hp@6250 rpm
Accord Hybrid - 28/35 253hp@6000 rpm
Accord LX-V4 - 24/34 166hp@5800 rpm
All figures are courtesy of the Honda website.
The Prius gets nearly twice the mileage of the Accord hybrid and straddles two car size classes - the midsize sedan and the small sedan. The Accord is squarely within the midsize sedan, so the Prius is an apples to oranges comparison.
Toyota has a hybrid version of the Camry, based on the Prius specs, which gets 40 city / 38 highway (with 187 hp), so it will be interesting to see how the sales work out when it becomes available. The price of the Camry hybrid is $26,200, so that also suggests the Accord hybrid wasn't priced right.
My sense is that the Accord Hybrid was the wrong car for the wrong market and bad business decisions play a role in the failure, not that it was a hybrid.
Of course, none of this is provided in the actual article noting the demise of the Accord Hybrid.
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