Honda changing course; will build its own electric vehicles

Go Honda!

I bought a Honda Accord hatchback 5-speed soon after they were released. Wonderful sporty car to drive. Pity it only had 3 doors.

Once innovators, now followers. Get it together Japanese car makers. What happened to the glory days?

@shogun36

What happened to the glory days?

Japan's glory days are long past behind her. It's all downhill from here and onward.

Electrification of transport will not happen as quickly as the enthusiasts claim, there simply is not the charging infrastructure or sufficient generating capacity to cope with it. Good idea in principle but it is going to take a while yet.

Until we decarbonise the generating capacity, driving an electric vehicle will merely shunt the problem to a different location. It becomes meaningless hypocritical virtue signaling.

It would have been nice to read Honda is setting up facilities that will reduce the company's carbon footprints. We need more electric vehicles, anything to get stinky polluting, fuel burning/ wasting vehicles off the road, and also reduce the power of the globe's fossils and the fossil industries and governments they control.

Until we decarbonise the generating capacity

I agree, good life cycle costing analysis methodologies are needed, so we can make better and more informed decisions re how we should go forward and away from the fossil era.

In other words how we can make progress, which is a dirty word to those cult members believing there was a garden we should go back in time to and that there is a messiah who can lead them back.

It's good news but overall there's not enough Lithium. You're swapping oil dependency for lithium mining. Sure electrify as many as you can but a better approach would be grid connected vehicles so for example every vehicle from transport to car is wirelessly picking up energy (microwaves have been tested to work) from the road itself. Then the road becomes the energy source. Then you can use the grid to power it.

Grid connected vehicles thus have a non geographic point and merely use a pitance of energy billed by the minute to the municipality with the energy. Win win

If everything is transported from the grid the cost of goods attributed to gas prices would plummet without losses to businesses as well

The idea of EVs is a nice-sounding one, but the REALITY of them is not as "eco" as people are being led to believe. One of the major hurdles is the massive batteries that require a tremendous amount of (largely fossil-fuel powered) energy in order to mine, refine, process, and manufacture the cells that use LITHIUM. The EVs have a much higher level of "embedded carbon" when they roll off the production line than the same/similar ICE vehicles. The batteries are also significantly heavier than the ICE which requires more frequent tire changes. Charging the EVs is also largely by fossil-fueled power plants (depending on the region). It's not unlike using a gasoline/diesel-powered generator to charge the EV and then claim it to be "green". Further down the road is the reality that the battery cells reach the end of their usable service lives well before an ICE and cost close to 50% of the price of the new vehicle.

Honda and the other car manufacturers know that the buyers will HAVE TO buy another new vehicle sooner (than an ICE) and are engineering themselves a frequent replacement market. They are securing themselves a forced market.

Where is Mr FUSION when you need him?

@sf2k

Baby steps man! But I hear you. Will be good to have clean air in our cities at least, for the time being. That alone makes electric vehicles worth it for me.

Japanese car companies: hurry up already, or perish.

As a car enthusiast, not having an engine's crackle and pop, or a supercharger whine, the lack of sound and vibration or exhaust fumes are some of the reasons I'll never make the transition from an ICE vehicle to an EV.

The satisfaction of driving a real car, not hugging some tree is what I want.

@Samit Basu if you have any kind of idea on what kind of company Honda is, you'd never speak that way. Classic Honda pulling a Honda once again.

Once innovators, now followers. Get it together Japanese car makers. 

Toyota building 18 BEV's by 2025.

WOW! Japan is yet again way behind the rest of the world in terms of politics, products, and permutation.

Electric cars have been in the making since Elon Musk pioneered the way forward since the American company Tesla.

Way to go Honda!

To hell with cars and car culture - sick of cities and urban areas being designed around their needs rather than those of pedestrian, cyclists and residents. Anyone think a concrete flyover is attractive to look at?

Electric cars have been in the making since Elon Musk pioneered the way forward since the American company Tesla.

Except Elon Musk was not the founder of Tesla, merely a high ranking shareholder later on. He later bought out the founders and continued from there

There's great irony in this story as it was GM that had fallen behind Japanese car manufacturers in the 80's. GM also had the EV1 in the mid 90's then dramatically and emphatically in a fit scrapped them all at once (as they were on lease) for big vehicles. Now GM has been getting back into EV's. So after all this time now, now Honda thinks it's a good idea. How far behind can you be if you're so far behind the likes of GM?

Personally I think, they do not at all jump on the electric cars train because they want it or think it’s better or more ecological, no , this time a massive number of politicians in all developed countries stands behind them with threats and forces them to do so, if they want to keep any of their business left. They mostly don’t have a problem, when it has been turned out an illusion, less clean and eco than thought , not enough lithium or battery refilling networks etc., to easily switch back to the normal combustion products, still designs and know how having in the desks.

Not ONE of the folks who urge the complete conversion to EVs addresses the Inconvenient Truth that the production of the toxic batteries is totally counterproductive to ecology-cult propaganda.

The sourcing of Lithium for the MASSIVE batteries is unbelievably damaging to Earth, far worse than ICE vehicles. Reality.

Not Realistic, fairy tale , where does the electricity come from, how about the special metals, how about all the other issues electric cars produce ........................I know many of you believe in the tooth fairy still but reality is still reality.

Prodcuing and driving electric cars going to solve the planets problems you think ? Dream on Dream on Dream On ,............................Steven Tyler

Except Elon Musk was not the founder of Tesla, merely a high ranking shareholder later on.

Remember Amazon used to sell books then transformed itself? Tesla is about harnessing and storing energy. I'm not sure if they'll be known for their EV's in the future.

I prefer to walk, take the subway or ride a bike instead of being locked between four cans, throwing smoke and paying for fuel like a sheep.

The Heel Toe Express is really the way to go in Tokyo.

Headline is misleading.

Honda are already building the "e" for Japan and Europe (but not N. America) in Saitama. And they've been building hydrogen electric vehicles in Tochigi since 2008 - years ahead of everyone else bar Toyota.

Anyone who can see Honda in the rear view mirror is about to get lapped.