Honda says making cheap electric vehicles is too hard, ends deal with GM
Honda says making cheap electric vehicles is too hard, ends deal with GM
The platform was to use GM's Ultium batteries.
Honda says making cheap electric vehicles is too hard, ends deal with GM::The platform was to use GM's Ultium batteries.
So, like all the others, while China will produce cheap eCars. Look, I don't want to predict the future, but if I only have 20-30k for a new car, I simply physically can't buy a 60k SUV. You can't jump into a saturated market of other car companies, who almost all seam to want only expensive eCars and expect a good outcome. There's only so much money in the pockets of people and only so much people are willing to pay for a used eCar, if it needs expensive battery replacement soon. Not going to happen. Build cheaper cars or fail.
As trade with North America and China degraded that was one of the worst casualties.
China has a booming market for small EVs. It is not an understatement to say they are years ahead of us in that regard.
What is it North America? Because you said I'm not allowed to have public transit and now I'm not even allowed to have the type of car I want.
Oh boy do I love freedom.
We did nothing and tried everything!
I'm a little sad about this - the planned Honda looked nice, the range would have been fine for us (we usually take our pickup on longer road trips anyway), and I was hoping to replace our Mazda 3 with one if it drove nicely and all that. I admit that I had some concerns about the GM underpinnings, though - my experience with American brands is rough, and our experience with GM is the roughest.
We plan to hit the auto shows next year to get an idea of what we want to look at more closely.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment we are ending development of an affordable EV," said Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe in an interview with Bloomberg.
In July, GM had to idle BrightDrop's production line in Canada due to a shortage of battery cells, and Kelly Blue Book's sales data for the first three quarters of 2023 show that just 6,920 Ultium-based EVs (which include the Chevrolet Blazer and Silverado EV, as well as the Hummer, Lyriq, and BrightDrop van) were delivered to customers.
GM had said it was ending Bolt production this year at its plant in Orion Township, Michigan, so that it could retool and start building electric trucks beginning in 2024.
The Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX are a pair of electric crossovers that use the same platform as the Cadillac Lyriq and Chevrolet Blazer, and both are still happening.
They'll even feature Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which GM has controversially chosen to eliminate from its cars from model year 2024 onward.
And Honda even announced another collaboration with GM earlier today—in 2026, it wants to start operating a robotaxi service in Japan using the Cruise Origin, an autonomous electric vehicle developed by the GM-backed AV company.
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Fossil fuel mafia dumped a large bribe into Honda's bank account?
Idk, even if you made almost everything out of aluminum , thats like $2000 for the raw metal for the frame and body, 8k for a 80kwh battery, about 5.5k for a 166HP emrax 228 motor off the shelf... with no transmission, the most expensive components combined are less than 20k. I dont see how even a 35k EV would not be profitable with some sensible off the shelf components.
Honda is probably right. Unless you're Tesla and every dollar you spend is dedicated to developing, manufacturing and selling EVs. But thus far they've been able to continue selling cars at high prices with massive profit margins.
Most "cheap" EVs like the Bolt are sold at a loss.