Honda held its annual business briefing this week, where new CEO Toshihiro Sanbe detailed the automaker’s new ambitious push for electric vehicles. One of the key takeaways for our market is that by 2025 we will have medium to heavy duty electric vehicles. This puts him a year ahead of Honda’s previously laid out plans. The vehicle will be powered by Honda’s internally developed EV architecture. So this is a completely separate entity from Honda’s Prologue (pictured) and Acura ZDX crossovers that Honda has developed in collaboration with GM and will be housed in GM’s Ultium architecture. 2025’s EV is likely to be a mid-to-large, three-row crossover much beefier than the passport-sized Prologue.
This model runs on another in-house development called E&E, an electric and electronic vehicle software platform. Honda has already named its first global head of user experience, pulled from the Silicon Valley company Honda acquired in 2019. Envisioned as a continuous profit center For additional software and applications.
The business briefing comes a week after the Shanghai Motor Show, where Honda debuted four new EVs for the Chinese market. Honda COO, who can compare products from adjacent stands Shinji Aoyama joins the club car news “We’ve been overwhelmed by the Chinese,” he said of the progress neighboring countries have made in the EV sector. “They’re ahead of expectations,” said Sanbe, adding, “We are aware that we are slightly behind and are determined to turn the tables.”
In other aspects of the briefing, some secondary requirements of Push were met. Honda has partnered with microchip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to provide the rivers of silicon needed to make dreams come true. The company will get his Ultium batteries from his GM for the Prologue and other of his Ultium-based models in the near future, but for the rest of his decade, Honda will have a “high-capacity, high-output liquid Lithium Ion Battery” he collaborates with GS Yuasa. We also developed a semi-solid battery jointly with SES AI Corporation. A third battery truck sees Honda working on its own all-solid-state battery, aiming to set up a demo production line in Tochigi Prefecture in 2024. There is also a joint venture with LG Energy Solutions at a battery production plant.Construction could break in the US by the end of the year
On the auto-manufacturing side, Mibe said Honda is developing an assembly plant dedicated to EVs.
A rough roadmap at the moment targets annual sales of 2 million Honda EVs and fuel cell vehicles worldwide by 2030. This represents 40% of the planned annual sales of 5 million units. Automakers will begin phasing out ICE models in various markets in 2027. By 2040, we plan to sell only EVs and FCEVs.
