Honda Automobile (Thailand) Co Ltd has started selling the all-new City in the country. The new City has a 1.5-litre i-VTEC engine with higher fuel efficiency. Furthermore, the company says the new City achieves the highest levels in every area in its efforts to become the new benchmark for subcompact sedans. In Thailand, the new City will sell for 524,000 – 694,000 baht.

With regard to production of the new City, Honda will support the start-up of production in developing countries including Asean markets, India and China.

The second Honda plant will begin operations in October, expanding the total annual production capacity to 240,000 units. Honda will also beef up auto exports and technical support to other operations to enhance its role as the leader plant.

Honda's automobile production capabilities in Thailand have grown continuously for more than 20 years, thus helping accelerate advancement of automobile production in the region by providing technical support for other production operations in neighboring countries.

Honda has been strongly promoting the country's local autonomy by transferring more production and procurement functions from Japan to Thailand with the aim of strengthening production strategy and increase local parts sourcing. In addition, increased coordination with local R&D and production engineering functions (production equipment and tooling) is supporting the advancement of Honda production operations in Thailand as the leader plant in the region. As a result, the local content of the new City has now reached 93% from 83% of current model.