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(L-R) Ms. Joanne Sofela, Sr. Science Research Specialist of DOE's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Division and Mr. Voltaire Gonzales, Vehicle Sales and Corp. Comm. Department Head of HCPI, flagging-off the 3.5 Honda Accord

Honda Cars Philippines, Inc. recently held the 2009 Honda Challenge Cup, a fuel efficiency driving competition that promotes fuel economy awareness in the face of unstable fuel prices.

Honda, in cooperation with Petron, embarked on this drive to demonstrate how a simple fuel efficient driving style can make a big difference. Having ‘Drive Every Drop’ as the over-all theme, the competition posed various challenges in both city and highway driving conditions using normal, day-to-day driving style with running air conditioning system. Natural driving environment was chosen for the competition. For city driving portion, participants traversed the traffic congested roads of Ayala Avenue, Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue and EDSA at around 10 AM. Meanwhile for highway driving leg, participants tackled the North Luzon Expressway on the way to Angeles, Pampanga and back to Petron Balagtas station. The team with the best kilometer per liter record generated by adding the fuel consumption within the 38.8 km stretch of city driving and within the 111.0 km distance under highway driving condition wins.


2009 Honda Challenge Cup Winners, together with Mr. Hiroshi Shimizu, President and Gen. Manager of HCPI

A total of 24 participants composed of members of the media and Honda Club of the Philippines joined the economy run and put up a good fight. Participants were divided into 12 teams, each team composed of a driver and a navigator. Two teams were tasked to compete in one of the six categories, which represent different Honda variants namely: 1.3 City, 1.5 City, 1.3 Jazz, 1.8 Civic, 2.0 CR-V and 3.5 Accord. Each competing vehicle was loaded with Petron XCS, the official gasoline of 2009 Honda Challenge Cup.

The team of Jeff Aspacio and Julius Valdoz topped the 1.3 City category with an average fuel mileage of 20.28 km/li. Paul Santos and Carlo Reyes led the 1.5 City category with 20.62 km/li, Mikko David and Datu Jainal with 17.51 km/li for the 1.3 Jazz category, Joshua Dayto and Allan Jaramillo with 15.19 km/li for the 1.8 Civic category, Jude Morte and Conrad Tumpalan with 17.85 km/li for the 2.0 CR-V category, and lastly, Eggay Quesada and Martin Fernando with 12.36 km/li for the 3.5 Accord category.

“Being one of the key industry players, Honda takes serious corporate responsibility in fostering improvement in fuel economy and reduction of harmful emissions. Burning less fuel not only means monetary savings but also reduces deposit of harmful emission to the environment" says Mr. Hiroshi Shimizu, President and General Manager of Honda Cars Philippines, Inc. “Thus, Honda takes the much-needed proactive measures in advocating the significance of fuel economy.”

Honda is committed in developing products and technologies that have minimal footprint on the environment. In order to reach the greatest impact on fuel economy and clean air, Honda has always targeted the mass-market models. Years of research has led to the development of engines with highly efficient internal combustion system like the i-VTEC engine. Powering Honda’s complete model line-up, the i-VTEC technology lets you drive every drop of fuel by employing valve timing combination that pumps in fuel only when needed. More than outstanding fuel efficiency, Honda vehicles are also engineered to pass the stringent European Emission Standards. Aimed to regulate the amount of pollution that can be released into the atmosphere, these standards set the acceptable limits for exhaust emissions of new vehicles sold in Europe. Among local manufacturers, Honda is the only brand that has reached EURO 4 levels for ALL its model line-up, even if Philippine regulations only require EURO 2 compliance. As early as 2004, Honda has started to introduce models with EURO 4 levels in the country, accumulating over 64,000 Euro 4 level units sold.

Honda hopes that with the Honda Challenge Cup, it is able to spread the word on proper and practical driving methods and ultimately, convince road users to get the most out of fuel, DRIVE EVERY DROP and reduce emissions towards a cleaner and healthier future for generations to come.

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