As I understand it, automakers have resisted fuel efficiency because those vehicles have a much smaller profit margin on them, and have attempted in the past to claim it was consumers that shunned the improvements. It seems that they are trying to continue this strategy, or at least were up to this model year, by creating vehicles with nominal efficiency gains attached to significantly higher price tags to mold the consumer into a mindset equating Hybrids as “not worth the extra cost.”

Thanks for the comment. While I agree that the motivation when looking at those EPA number is clearly to go for the much cheaper Honda Fit, you have to consider that they are very different cars in terms of size, power, and market. If you were to compare the Fit to the new Honda Insight I think you would find that among comparable vehicles there is a good fuel economy boost to be had with the increased price (and that premium is getting smaller every day).

No significant increase in fuel economy for hybrids while significantly increasing the price for consumers to me is clearly an attempt to kill off the Hybrid, the same way they did the EV-1. Automakers want people to make the same “wait a minute” moment in everyone, and then hope that they conclude that Hybrids are a joke and go back to buying the more profitable conventional cars. Hybrids are clearly capable of much greater efficiency, but the industry (even Toyota it seems) is dragging its feet because it prefers the profit structure of the existing car models.