Push 30 pure electric vehicles! Honda's electrification strategy exposed

Recently, Honda Motor, Japan's second largest car company, announced its latest electrification strategic plan.

In this plan, Honda motor said that it will invest $64 billion in electrification transformation in the next 10 years, and launch 30 pure electric vehicles by 2030, when the annual production will reach 2 million.

A year ago, Honda Global CEO Toshihiro Mibe announced the goal of "full electrification", planning to completely stop selling gasoline-powered cars by 2040.

This also makes Honda the first car company in Japan to publicly stop selling fuel models.

After one year, Honda has released the latest initiative of the electrification transformation strategy, which is quite full of transformation.

25 years of electric road

Honda's electric car road began 25 years ago.

In 1997, Honda's first electric car EV Plus came out, when the concept of new energy was not as strong as it is now, and the background of this car was to comply with the California Air Commission's requirement that 2% of the cars produced in California must be electric vehicles. Battery technology at the time lagged far behind what it is now, so the model used nickel-metal hydride batteries with a range of about 130 kilometers, a powertrain of only 66 horsepower, and a top speed of about 129 kilometers per hour.

With the inclusion of hybrid vehicles in the category of new energy vehicles, Honda EV Plus finally came to an end due to high cost and immature battery technology, and Kenji Matsumoto, the project leader of EV Plus, has admitted that there are still many problems.

The ev plus's discontinuation didn't stop the automotive industry from exploring the electric age, and Honda subsequently switched to hybrids as well.

Since 1999, Honda began to develop fuel cell vehicles, and in 1999-2003 insisted on launching a new fuel cell vehicle every year, in 2003 when the development of FCX-V4, the technical parameters have been very close to the current fuel cell vehicles. Subsequently, Honda launched the FCX Clarity fuel cell sedan in 2006.

In 2010, Tomohiko Kawauchi, president of Honda's R&D department, said that he would continue to conduct research on electric vehicles. Against the backdrop of rising fuel economy standards, Honda unveiled an all-electric version of the Athletic at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, when fit with a 20 kWh lithium-ion battery pack and was expected to travel about 131 kilometers.

Between 2013 and 2015, Honda also sold about 1,100 Accord plug-in hybrids for about 287,700 yuan.

As sales of Accord plug-in hybrids gradually decreased to a few units per month, Honda's in-house electric vehicles also had new products.

At the Detroit Auto Show at the end of 2015, Honda showed off a concept car, the FCV, and said that in 2018 there will be a pure electric and plug-in hybrid version of the Clarity model.

In 2016, Honda CEO Takago Takahiro said that by 2050, hybrid and other versions of electric vehicle sales will account for two-thirds of Honda's European market, and the ownership of electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles is expected to account for 15% of Honda's electric vehicles.

To achieve this, Honda set up a new division in 2017 to specialize in the production of pure electric vehicles, and launched the Everus pure electric concept car at the 2018 Beijing Auto Show, and the Everus VE-1 mass production version interview at the Guangzhou Auto Show in November.

In 2040, the sale of fuel vehicles will be completely discontinued

In April 2021, Honda Global CEO Toshihiro Mibe announced the goal of "full electrification", according to which Honda's sales ratio of electric vehicles (EVs) and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) in the global market will reach 40% in 2030, 80% in 2035 and 100% in 2040.

This also makes Honda the first car manufacturer in Japan to publicly stop selling fuel models, and plans to completely stop selling gasoline-powered cars by 2040.

After one year, Honda once again released the latest measures of the electrification transformation strategy, including R&D investment, organizational structure adjustment, electric vehicle launch plan, strengthening global battery procurement, and strengthening software and networking.

For the development of future trams, Honda said that it will separate the "electric products and services, batteries, energy, mobile power packages, hydrogen fuel" with future core competitiveness from the existing organizational structure divided by motorcycles, automobiles, and power products, and the "software and networking field" associated with this, and integrate them into a new organization "Business Development Headquarters".

In terms of battery procurement, Honda will purchase "Ultium platform" batteries from GM and is currently studying the establishment of a battery production joint venture to be launched in North America; for the Chinese and Japanese markets, Honda will strengthen cooperation with CATL and purchase batteries from Envision Power, and plans to invest about 43 billion yen in the demonstration line of all-solid-state battery construction that is currently under development.

In terms of electric vehicles, Honda has also analyzed the global battery procurement and automobile launch in this latest initiative, and this initiative will mainly involve the three major markets of North America, China and Japan.

From the timeline point of view, Honda plans to launch commercial light pure electric vehicles with a price of about 1 million yen in the first half of 2024 in the Japanese domestic market, and in the same year, it will also launch two medium and large pure electric vehicles jointly developed with GM in North America, and the Chinese market plans to launch nearly 10 pure electric vehicles by 2027.

Reporter: Fan Mengcheng Wu Di

Edit: Zuo Yu

Editor-in-Charge: BiDandan

Cover source: Infographic