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Transportation Power

Honda To Spend $11 Billion On Four EV Factories In North America (arstechnica.com) 137

Jonathan M. Gitlin reports Ars Technica: Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and it's this last one that will benefit from the expansion, with four EV-related plants planned for Ontario. Honda says it has begun evaluating requirements for what it's calling an "innovative and environmentally responsible" EV factory and a standalone EV battery plant in Alliston, Ontario, which is already home to Honda's two existing Canadian manufacturing facilities.

Additionally, the automaker wants to set up another two sites as joint ventures. One will be a plant that processes cathode active materials and their precursors -- the various elements like nickel and manganese that are combined with lithium in lithium-ion batteries -- set up in a partnership with POSCO Future M, a South Korean battery material and chemical company. (POSCO is already working with General Motors on another joint venture battery precursor material facility in Betancour, Quebec, that is supposed to become operational in 2026.) A second joint venture will be a partnership with Asahi Kasei, which will manufacture battery separators, the material that keeps the anode and cathode apart. The locations of these two joint ventures have not yet been announced.

Honda thinks it will be able to start making EVs in Ontario in 2028 and says the assembly plant will have the capacity to build 240,000 EVs per year. Meanwhile, the battery plant is planned to have an annual output of 36 GWh.

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Honda To Spend $11 Billion On Four EV Factories In North America

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  • by dpille ( 547949 ) on Friday April 26, 2024 @05:12AM (#64426638)
    Honda should pay better attention. Don't they know there's no market for EVs? And that every automaker loses $130k or something for every one they sell?

    I just can't get over how those successful, experienced automobile manufacturers at Honda keep failing to heed the advice of slashdotters that know better. It's not like we say these things just because it aligns with our political views!
    • by Apotekaren ( 904220 ) on Friday April 26, 2024 @05:38AM (#64426650)

      You think a short-term blip caused by EVs dropping in price is âno marketâ? You think the fearmongering article about Ford was a truthful view of EV manufacturing as a long-term investment?

      Read up on the Gartner Hype Cycle. Weâ(TM)ve just hit the Trough of Disillusionment. Honda is investing to stay relevant in the 2030â(TM)s. Anyone who doesnâ(TM)t shift will disappear by 2035.

      • It's worth mentioning that while pure EVs aren't selling so well, Hybrid EVs are selling very well. So "not selling well" is a bit of a narrow viewpoint.
    • Eventually Tesla turned a profit. They too didn't initially make enough money to offset startup costs, but eventually those costs got covered.

      Ford is both dealing with legitimate startup costs and perhaps engaging in Hollywood accounting to shuffle expense where it signs to their financial strategies (maybe tax breaks on losses related to electrification or something, or bundling broader expense problems together under an understandable silo). As the supply chain stabilizes and the fixed costs are already

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Yes, let's continue to heat up the atmosphere and the oceans until we fry ourselves off the planet...brilliant!

      • Yeah but those EVs run on renewable energy... socialist energy! This is the biggest socialist conspiracy to sap US citizens' precious bodily fluids since the last one. 'Murican cars will be driven by socialist electricity. Cars that drive children to school! Oh, the children, will no one think of the children! Freedom!
    • EVs, eh? Good for goin' oat & aboat, eh?
    • Throwing good money after bad. How long will it take before they realize the folly of their sunken cost fallacy?
    • by Targon ( 17348 )
      People who don't understand manufacturing and business always point at information that is misleading or just WRONG. Traditional car engines started with early designs, and they evolved, but the cost of R&D is still the cost of R&D. With electric vehicles, all new designs are needed, so people see the cost of the R&D as being higher, because it isn't just working off the previous investments in research and development. Once the designs are at an acceptable level, the costs to develop futu
    • And that every automaker loses $130k or something for every one they sell?

      Not *every* automaker loses money like that on EVs...

  • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday April 26, 2024 @05:51AM (#64426660) Homepage

    This is all to produce a peak of 240k EVs per year. Production "starts" in 2028. It takes years for a factory to hit full production. Let's be generous and say 2030.

    Honda sold 1,3 million vehicles in the US alone last year - let alone all of North America, including both Canada and Mexico. If all those EVs were just for the US it'd be 18% of their sales, but for all of North America, significantly less.

    In short, Honda thinks that in 2030 only maybe 1/7th to 1/8th of its North American sales will be EVs. This is a very pessimistic game plan.

    • You seem to know for sure that this is Hondas ONLY investment into EV manufacturing? They stop here?
      And are you sure the North American Honda market doesnâ(TM)t import from Japan or other countries?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Unless... They build another factory. Or start converting one of their existing ones. Or rebadge someone else's EV, like a lot of the European manufacturers do.

      I'm pessimistic about the US market as well, but I wouldn't read too much into this.

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        They're laying out their plans for up to the end of the decade. You think this is just a fraction of their NA plans, that they're hiding things from their giant "Look, We're Doing EVs!" press release?

    • They are probably building hybrid plants but getting EV plant tax credits.

      They'll "update" their plan in a few years.

    • This is all to produce a peak of 240k EVs per year. Production "starts" in 2028. It takes years for a factory to hit full production. Let's be generous and say 2030.

      Honda sold 1,3 million vehicles in the US alone last year - let alone all of North America, including both Canada and Mexico. If all those EVs were just for the US it'd be 18% of their sales, but for all of North America, significantly less.

      In short, Honda thinks that in 2030 only maybe 1/7th to 1/8th of its North American sales will be EVs. This is a very pessimistic game plan.

      Possibly. But I expect I suspect they can convert existing plants to EV or plug-in hybrids, so this could instead be an indication that they expect sales to grow by 240k vehicles, and all that growth is to be represented by EVs.

      In the short term it seems like plug-in hybrids will win the day. For city driving with home charging they're almost as good as an EV (you just need to plug in a bit more). And for highway driving they're as good as an ICE. The full scale EV transition will probably only come when ra

    • Honda already has EV production plans for 2024 (prologue) and 2025 (zdx) at existing plants in the US
  • Honda's getting about CAD $5B in subsidies to expand production in Ontario. I'm philosophically opposed to subsidies like this, but companies play governments like chumps. "Well, if you don't subsidize us, we'll simply go to $OTHER_JURISDICTION that will subsidize us... that'd be a shame..."

    • Well, splitting up countries into smaller, autonomous, isolated states, provinces, & territories with as little federal oversight as possible creates opportunities for corporations & other countries' governments to play of those states, provinces, & territories against each other. It also makes it an advantage for corporations & other countries' governments to sow division & conflict between states, provinces, & territories. Just as unity is strength, disunity is weakness, which make
  • Canadian Pravda, aka CBC News recently posted article questioning this. [www.cbc.ca]

    Enormous investments in EV technology shook the automotive industry in both Canada and the U.S. this week. Honda promised to spend $15 billion in Ontario on Thursday morning. Toyota unveiled new investments in Indiana that afternoon, bringing its total spending on EVs in that state to $8 billion US. But the surge in investment comes as the underlying EV industry remains at a crossroads. Growth forecasts have plateaued, charging infrastr

  • After Elon has gone full crazy, many won't by Tesla, anymore. Especially those that like the idea of doing less harm and care about workers. EVs are lacking in competition and unless Musk moves on, Tesla. Plus, Elon is all about profit, so I expect there are still "many built to fail" aspects of their cars, and of course the repair lock in exacerbates that problem. I'm hoping all manufactures step up. I have a Hyundai hybrid, because I couldn't afford a full electric, now. Also, I have an ideal of 500 miles

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