How Honda Is Wholly Honing In On Making Electric Vehicles
Honda is finally making good on its plan to transition its fleet of cars to electric. The company just made a massive leap into the space.
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Honda is the latest major automaker beginning to make good on its promise to become an all-EV company within the next two decades. The auto giant, along with its battery manufacturer LG, is sinking $4.4 billion dollars into the construction of a new factory in the United States. The factory will reportedly solely produce batteries to be placed inside Honda EVs.
The new battery-making Honda plant will most likely be located near Honda’s main US assembly factory in Marysville, Ohio. The new facility is expected to be able to output enough batteries to power upwards of 700,000 cars in a year. If all goes according to plan, the plant should be up and running by 2025.
Honda’s investment in bolstering its electric vehicle development aligns with plans the company outlined earlier. To date, Honda has been a little behind other auto manufacturers, given the fact that the company doesn’t even have one EV model in its lineup at present. However, the company is looking to change that by 2030, and this factory is its first big step towards accomplishing that goal. By 2040, Honda is hoping to offer an all-EV lineup.
Honda has enlisted the likes of major players in both the tech and auto industries to help the company in its transition to electric vehicles. Honda is teaming up with General Motors and Sony and has invested $36 billion to assist in the creation of its new electric cars.
Honda hasn’t been exceedingly vocal regarding what has taken the company so long to begin making the leap that so many others have already made. However, the Japanese automaker did point to the global availability of batteries as one of the factors. “The key challenge in the EV era is the global procurement of batteries,” said Honda’s Senior Managing Executive Officer Shinji Aoyama.
That being said, now that the United States is beginning to make measurable jumps in the transition to EVs, it’s likely that the powers that be at Honda took notice. Thanks to President Biden’s recent climate bill, electric charging infrastructure will be greatly expanded and enhanced across the country in the coming years. As that happens, more and more people will be in the market to purchase an electric vehicle. The Biden Administration is hoping that 50% of all cars sold at the end of this decade will be electric. If Honda wants a chance to capture a piece of that market, it had no choice but to begin working on developing its own EVs.
Like Honda, Tesla is also focusing on amping up its battery production so that it can make more cars readily available to consumers. Tesla and its battery maker Panasonic are slated to open two new $4 billion plants in the coming years. The plants reportedly will be located in Kanas and Oklahoma. Their placement is strategic. First, because both are conveniently located near Tesla’s assembly factory in Texas. Second, both Kansas and Oklahoma are offering huge cutbacks for building the plants in their states. Ultimately, what all of this serves to show is that the EV revolution is upon us.
