Honda currently has 0 EVs for sale.
These guys dont give af about EVs... touting Panasonic's research while they twiddle their thumbs and do the bare minimum.
Currently Honda is planning to have solid state batteries at the same time as the rest of the industry. So they make a lot of noise about this, but they're exactly as far behind as it appears.
The reality is they’re a fairly small automaker and 99% of their current sales are IC cars. They believe they will do more for the environment to keep spending a large portion of their R&D budget getting gains out of their existing cars than completely pivoting to something people aren’t currently buying. In the meantime, a lot of the fundamental issues with EV cars will iron themselves out.
Westerners want results tomorrows but the Japanese will take incremental steps that maximize the chance of success over an incredibly long time horizon. Very different mindsets.
Trouble is that all automakers selling in North America seem to have no interest in making EVs that ordinary people can afford, it is all about luxury and behemoth vehicles.
When Chinese manufacturers reach our shores I think domestic, Euro and Japanese carmakers will get an unpleasant surprise.
European and Japanese manufacturers are already getting that nasty surprise in European markets competing with Chinese EVs like the MG4 etc.
I suspect that most Europeans buyers have no idea that MG is now owned by a Chinese company. No native Chinese brand sell above 1% in the EU.
Certainly very few customers think they are buying a British product! It also hasn't prevented the MG4 from picking up a lot of critical acclaim/car of the year awards in Europe too, and virtually every review of the car mentions its Chinese origin, usually in the context of it offering more EV for less money in several regards than a European ID3 etc.
EVs that do or almost do make sense without strong subsidization by investments, such as Nissan Leaf, Toyota bZ4X, Honda e[1] are still ignored and/or trivialized for disappointing product value propositions.
1: Why is the e sometimes considered a compliance car? There's no gas variant or shared platform or body panel, it's all-custom all-new ... garbage. But not a factory engine swap like MX-30 EV or e-Golf.
This may be true, but unfortunately the timeline we have created for ourselves with regards to climate change is unyielding. The scale of the problem is that we need to take as many IC cars off the road as fast as possible and put as many electric cars on the road as possible if we want to avoid disastrous climate scenarios.
It really seems like Japan went all in on fuel cell technology.
In the early 2000s Toyota and Honda did hybrids right while the US OEMs sat out the first 10 year. Japan OEMS are doing that failed US OEM stragegy now for EVs... and they'll unfortunately pay for it.
https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/honda-announces-next-st...
That one joint venture battery plant for instance will at some point do 40GWH output a year while Tesla's Reno plan does 100 GWH a year -- right now.
This is a compliance car.