Thread Starter
#1
The headline is that Honda—which sells precisely one EV today, the Honda e, a two-seat sports car not offered in North America—will launch 30 electric vehicles globally by 2030. Their collective volume will be more than 2 million units, out of a typical annual Honda production of 5 million. This comes, mind you, from a company that limited production of its compliance-car Fit EV to 1400 units and whose subsequent 2018 Clarity Electric mid-size sedan was pulled from the market after its EPA-rated range of 89 miles proved uncompetitive.
Among those 30 future electric vehicles will be two "sporty" EVs, one of them a successor to the Acura NSX that has just departed the market. Expect the bulk of the new EVs to be crossover utilities, however, in line with the global market trend.
In North America, Honda plans to work with General Motors on two generations of EVs. First come two battery-electric SUVs: the Honda Prologue and a so-far-unnamed Acura, both to be launched in 2024. Those will be built by GM on the Ultium architecture that underpins the GMC Hummer EV, the Cadillac Lyriq, the Chevrolet Silverado EV, and many more vehicles. But those plans have been known for a while now.
In its home market of Japan, Honda will launch EVs at the other end of the scale: the kei class, or minicars, hugely popular there but rarely sold in volume elsewhere. The first is to be a mini-EV for commercial use, likely a kei van, targeting a price of 1 million yen ($8000). It will be followed by a variety of other models for personal use, including mini-SUVs.
In China, by far the world's leading EV market today, Honda will introduce 10 new EV models by 2027, to be built at dedicated plants in Guangzhou and Wuhan. Oddly, European markets weren't mentioned at all in Honda's press materials.
The underlying technologies for these various vehicles aren't specified, but the company notes it will expand use of the "Honda e: Architecture" now used for the Honda e to other vehicles. That EV platform combines hardware and software—which ties into another part of an ambitious restructuring of the company.
///