Honda To Spend $11 Billion On Four EV Factories In North America (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0173643764
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/25/2325228/honda-to-spend-11-billion-on-four-ev-factories-in-north-america
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/04/honda-to-spend-11-billion-on-four-ev-factories-in-north-america/
> Honda announced today that it will [1]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.
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> 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.
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> 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.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/04/honda-to-spend-11-billion-on-four-ev-factories-in-north-america/
Putting numbers into perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: Putting numbers into perspective (Score:2)
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?
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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.
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They are probably building hybrid plants but getting EV plant tax credits.
They'll "update" their plan in a few years.
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> 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
Yes, with lots of subsidies (Score:2)
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..."
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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
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I remember the Amazon HQ2 "sweepstakes" which had like 5 states tripping over each other to offer tax deals to entice them to their state.
[1]The Lie Behind Amazon’s HQ2 Sweepstakes Becomes Clear [prospect.org]
[1] https://prospect.org/power/2023-03-06-amazon-hq2-sweepstakes-lie/
Even Canadian Pravda questioning this (Score:2)
Canadian Pravda, aka CBC News recently posted article questioning [1]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
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ev-sales-have-slowed-do-massive-subsidies-still-make-sense-1.7185232
Battery heaters (Score:1)
Otherwise the batteries will die every winter, cold kills the batteries and rewarming recharging won't revive them after they reach a critical cold temperature
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I think every EV today has a heating/cooling/thermal management system, I think those are actually the most "proprietary" things in regards to EV brands and the quality differentiator on battery life, how good is the charging and thermal management.
The early Prius model I believe were plagued by low life since they had little cooling so on later gens they just added a fan and a filter and made it part of the maintence to not block and clean said filter.
Pretty sure Tesla models and similar have full closed l
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It's true, all the EVs I see driving around every day died last winter. Totally disappeared.
Interesting gamble. (Score:2)
If a certain banana-coloured fellow becomes president the US market for these might be unavailable.
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Joe is getting jaundice?
Smart (Score:2)
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
Honda should listen better (Score:5, Funny)
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!
They have no choice (Score:1, Flamebait)
Numerous US states are going to ban new ICE sales , eg california by 2035. Ditto in the EU and UK also by 2035.
If it wasn't for the political intervention EVs would still be a very niche purchase and Tesla wouldn't be anything like the size of the company it is now.
You can argue whether its good or bad but its the way it is now.
Re:They have no choice (Score:4, Informative)
Most Japanese brands were late to the EV game, with the exception of Nissan. I think some of them are still hoping that hybrids remain available for decades to come.
Honda's first EV, the Honda e, was really good. Okay, small battery, but everything else was great. Top notch tech, the best HMI of any car on the market, and the vehicle itself really took advantage of the EV drivetrain with a tiny turning circle and well tuned suspension.
Their second one, the confusingly named e:Ny1, is pretty pedestrian, if you will excuse the pun. It has barely any EV features. Bizarrely the regen is both weak and resets to off after a few minutes of driving. It's a nice enough car in other ways, but priced ridiculously high and already massively discounted. Why they ditched all the good work they did with the Honda e remains a mystery.
There is the up-coming Honda and Sony collaboration, but I expect it will be over-priced and not particularly great.
Toyota's BZ4X or whatever it's called is apparently decent. Some initial software issues that limited charging speed were quickly fixed. Mazda has one EV but it's not very good. Mitsubishi had one but never developed it, and now has none. Suzuki, Daihatsu, and several others don't seem to have any EVs at all. Apparently a lot of the issue is down to their suppliers in Japan not developing suitable EV drivetrain components and not wanting to rely on China like the rest of the world does. Hard times for Japan's auto industry.
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> Most Japanese brands were late to the EV game, with the exception of Nissan. I think some of them are still hoping that hybrids remain available for decades to come.
PHEVs will remain popular with the 85% of humans that live in non-developed regions where you can't count on reliable charging stations being available every 30 kilometres and they may just be around for decades to come. ICE garages in these places will make good coin from repairing their ICE power trains, little used most of the time because using the electric power train is far cheaper to operate for the short distance travel these cars will be used for most of the time, particularly if you install your
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Interestingly developing nations seem to be some of the most keen on EVs. China, for example, has a growing middle class and they are buying a lot of electric vehicles. The convenience of being able to charge at home and from solar is attractive, as well as the lower maintenance costs and lower pollution.
In China's case they also have good public transport, so a 150km range isn't such a big deal. Batteries that size have reached price parity with ICE drivetrains.
It's fairly essential that we encourage and h
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We have a Honda PHEV. Its great! We buy gas for it maybe 5 times a year. Frankly if we were to do it again we would have just gotten an EV with better range. However, we also have garage where we can charge it and an ICE vehicle we can use when go on a road trip or want to haul things. But for someone with only one car and the inability to charge at home, PHEV is definitely the way to go with the current tech and infrastructure. I work from home (IT) and my wife commutes with the PHEV to the office. And we
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Where did you get your very exciting statistic about 85% of humans living in non-developed regions from?
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I guess he lives in the US and speaks from his own experience?
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No, the US is only ... what... 3% of the world population? 4%?
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How does that make any sense?
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I don't know about the EU ban but the Outcome of the California ban is predictable, huge sales increases for dealerships in neighboring states.
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> I don't know about the EU ban but the Outcome of the California ban is predictable, huge sales increases for dealerships in neighboring states.
Shortly followed by a huge increase in penalties and taxes for anybody operating one of those things in California. I know it's a dazzlingly beautiful and tempting notion but Milton Friedman was right about one thing, there is no such thing as a free lunch .
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> Shortly followed by a huge increase in penalties and taxes for anybody operating one of those things in California. I know it's a dazzlingly beautiful and tempting notion but Milton Friedman was right about one thing, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
You know, at some point, when life gets tough enough in CA, taxes get just TOO high (and I'd have to think it's close now)....the people will finally wake up and vote the politicians OUT of office that are making their lives so difficult with regards to
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Come now, people would vote for their favorite party if the party leaders drank the blood of children on stage. Hasn't the last 30 years taught you anything?
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ironically, he got the quote for free from someone else and used it to his economic advantage, which rather undermines the meaning of the quote.
[1]https://www.cato.org/blog/who-... [cato.org].
[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/who-said-tanstaafl-first#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThere%20ain't%20no%20such%20thing%20as%20free%20lunch.,of%20Scripps%E2%80%90%E2%80%8BHoward%20Newspapers
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No free lunch cuts both ways.
There is no free lunch in letting cars pollute freely. There's a huge knock-on cost which is bourne by everyone.
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Compared to the cars of decades past, today's already don't pollute at all, much less pollute "freely."
This is what [1]my home city of Cleveland, Ohio [imgur.com] used to look like. Some of this was industrial pollution. But a lot of it was cars.
We did a decent job of making ICE technology both more efficient and also more environmentally friendly. Gradually safer and more affordable as well.
But now our reward, according to some folks, is to have this technology rapidly phased out, before its replacement becomes
[1] http://i.imgur.com/r7w95xa.jpg
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> Numerous US states are going to ban new ICE sales , eg california by 2035. Ditto in the EU and UK also by 2035.
> If it wasn't for the political intervention EVs would still be a very niche purchase and Tesla wouldn't be anything like the size of the company it is now.
> You can argue whether its good or bad but its the way it is now.
No, one can't argue whether it is good or bad because banning ICE wherever possible is good like getting rid of obsolete technology always is. It's like having the choice between an air-conditioning system that slowly poisons everybody in the building every minute you run it and one that doesn't. Nobody in their right mind would get their panties in a twist if the former type of air-con was banned. Only a complete imbecile poisons his or her own living space to make an asinine political statement and let's
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"good like getting rid of obsolete technology always is"
Technology is only obsolete when its mooted replacement is better. EVs in their current form are not better than ICEs from an end user perspective.
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> Technology is only obsolete when its mooted replacement is better. EVs in their current form are not better than ICEs from an end user perspective.
They are if the end user can charge at home and aren't if they can't.
The intelligent thing to do would have been to mandate charger installation on new construction or any significant remodel or electrical system upgrade, years ago . But we can't agree to do things intelligently because we have to fight with each other over whether corporations have a right to make a profit. (They don't have one written into the law, but they seem to have a de facto one in that they can buy protectionist laws.)
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Why the fuck should I put an EV charger (that I will never use) out front just because I finished my basement?
Fuck that and fuck fascism.
In the meantime, I will be driving my currently 17 year old vehicle until the day I die.
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> Fuck that and fuck fascism.
The interesting thing about that statement is that it's the fascists that have brought us to this point where we have all these highly polluting coal plants.
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Why the fuck should I put an EV charger (that I will never use) out front just because I finished my basement?
I don't understand. Is someone forcing you to install an EV charger at your home?
I can understand mandating a 50A 240V outdoor outlet near the driveway or in the garage for new home builds, but who is making you retrofit a charger?
Or are you just randomly making up things to rage against?
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> I don't understand. Is someone forcing you to install an EV charger at your home?
> I can understand mandating a 50A 240V outdoor outlet near the driveway or in the garage for new home builds, but who is making you retrofit a charger?
> Or are you just randomly making up things to rage against?
Maybe you should have bothered to take the time to read the post I was responding to, which stated:
> The intelligent thing to do would have been to mandate charger installation on new construction or any significant remodel or electrical system upgrade, years ago.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
People said the same about horses being replaced by ICE vehicles ("horses can make more horses and that's a trick that tractors never learned"; LPs being replaced by CDs ('digital music always has steps and we as audiophiles can hear them'); bricks being replaced by smartphones ('my battery lasts all week'); watches being replaced by smart watches (ditto re batteries), etc etc
You, and lots of other consumers, may value vroom-vroom noises, the ability to tow three tons of kit and five minute refuels on long
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More to the point, it's unsustainable to just let anyone do anything just because they want to. There's a broad range of behaviors which fall into that non-category, and some of them are fine because they're not hurting anyone and some of them aren't because they are. Right to swing fist, end of my nose, etc etc.
I enjoy vroom vroom noises myself but I also appreciate that there are more important issues at hand than my own selfish gratification.
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More to the point, it's unsustainable to just let anyone do anything just because they want to.
That's called freedom , and there are a lot of us who will fight to keep what little is left of it.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
> People said the same about horses being replaced by ICE vehicles ("horses can make more horses and that's a trick that tractors never learned"; LPs being replaced by CDs ('digital music always has steps and we as audiophiles can hear them'); bricks being replaced by smartphones ('my battery lasts all week'); watches being replaced by smart watches (ditto re batteries), etc etc
> You, and lots of other consumers, may value vroom-vroom noises, the ability to tow three tons of kit and five minute refuels on long journeys more highly than silence, lack of vibration, instant acceleration, proportionate throttle response, no nasty smells, and the ability to charge at home, but I'm willing to bet quite a lot of money that ever more people will prefer the latter over the former, especially as upfront costs come down
If electric cars are oh-so-much better why do you need ICE bans to force people to buy them? Oh it's because they're actually expensive shit, and I know it, you know it, I know that you know, the politicians know it too, etc. and you're just getting snarky about "vroom vroom noises" to compensate.
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"People said the same about horses being replaced by ICE vehicles"
Cars were far superior to horses in every way except they can't refuel themselves. EVs are not superior to ICE for most use cases and you can make silly jokes about vroom vroom but it just proves you're a kid who doesn't drive distance much if at all.
" highly than silence, lack of vibration,"
Newsflash - above 30mph most of the in car noise is from the tyres and airflow around it. If you drove you'd know.
Now run along and play with your lego T
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> Cars were far superior to horses in every way except they can't refuel themselves.
That is not true. Cars were often inferior until a lot of public money was invested in making lots of better roads.
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Going to nitpick here a bit because I can.
Smart and dumb phones haven't been different tech for years and years. They are all ARM MCU based things with colour LCD or OLED screens and flash memory. The difference is software and usually smart phones have higher spec parts. Smart phones have more sensors, though that varies within smartphones too. Dumb phones usually have more buttons.
But it hasn't really been one tech replacing another as such. Plus dumb phones are still selling reasonably well to people who
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Nobody is going to ban ICE by 2035. That is another decade away, by then, we will all conveniently forget about it.
Remember when gasoline powered vehicles were to be phased out in favor of LPG by the year 2010? Yeah, I do, my parents believed it and drove around a bomb in the trunk of our Mazda until the fuel lines started pulverizing.
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Norway's ban on new ICE registrations is next year.
So right there you're already wrong.
LPG is just another fossil fuel, it ended up solving nothing because gasoline pollution controls got better and LPG still produces CO2. Also, bomb? You scared of gas grills too?
EVs are already really good, and only going to get better. The only reason I still have a PHEV is that I'm waiting on the price of used BEVs to come down. As it is, this PHEV has saved me so much money. My fuel cost went from $2500/year to und
Re: They have no choice (Score:2)
Maybe they were raised on all those 80's shows where people were always pushing gas grills off cliffs and then the grills would explode.
At my neighbor's cookout, their gas grill was rear-ended by another gas grill going 60mph and the steaks were fine. Jeez.
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...while other US states are trying to ban EVs, solar & wind, etc.. Swings & roundabouts, mate. Swings & roundabouts.
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> ...while other US states are trying to ban EVs, solar & wind, etc.. Swings & roundabouts, mate. Swings & roundabouts.
Ugh...I fucking HATE roundabouts.
I've seen a couple pop up here and there in a couple states I've been in recently.
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Well, in the U.K. roundabouts are awesome! I lived there while in the military. You don't have to wait on a long @$*! light! The trouble is, we don't do them right. In the U.K. there is one lane for every exit; so if there are five roads going in, there are 4 lanes (one will be the entry point, the rest exits). When entering, you move to the lane that corresponds with your exit i.e. if it's the last one, you go to the outer most lane, if it's the first, the first lane etc. Then when you pass an exit you mov
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What's wrong with roundabouts? I HATE four way stops and incessant traffic lights!
Roundabouts keep traffic flowing. They're also safer because they introduce an angle so you don't get completely t-boned if you pull in front of somebody.
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> Numerous US states are going to ban new ICE sales , eg california by 2035.
I wouldn't hold my breath or put down heavy bets on that just yet.
With current trends...EV sales dropping, etc....unless the battery tech gets better quickly, and there is more infrastructure....states likely will have to extend those deadlines just out of practicality....
Of course a lot can happen in 10 years, but also, as we've seen....a lot can just NOT happen in 10 years.
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Battery tech *already is* getting better quickly:
- A facelifted EQA saw range improved from 263 to 345 miles
- The facelifted Taycan has a 35% longer range because of a larger battery (in the same space) -- now at 421 miles
- CATL yesterday announced a new LFP battery with a 600 mile range, up from 400 miles in the old version. LFP was confined to things like buses until three years ago. Now it's in mass use for cars
- Findreams (owned by BYD) are on the cusp of launching Blade 2.0 battery packs, also LFP. It
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> the move from prismatic to cylindrical enables substantially better densities
When you put a bunch of cylinders in a box you by definition have wasted space.
When you put boxes in a box you can have no wasted space.
How does using cylindrical cells improve density?
Using cylindrical cells also means having to have more parallelism to achieve a specific capacity, which means more connections, which means less reliability. This is a big part of the reason why post-collision Tesla model S batteries are unsafe for RV power storage. You can't reasonably detect bonding faults.
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When and if they improve enough to be equivalent to or better than ICEs, people will buy them willingly. Why try to force people to do so sooner?
It's not progress that free people oppose. It is the initiation of force and/or fraud.
Re: Honda should listen better (Score:3)
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.
Re: Honda should listen better (Score:2, Informative)
I was now able to pick up the satire. Oh god that first bit was so realistic.
Re: Honda should listen better (Score:2)
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
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Yes, let's continue to heat up the atmosphere and the oceans until we fry ourselves off the planet...brilliant!
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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!
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This is just to soak up federal dollars. Biden is giving billions more on top of what they spend. They won't spend $11B, they will spend close to 0 between state and federal dollars to basically develop some cheap industrial space. Whether it fails after that is of no concern, you can just beg for more federal dollars for any losses, lay off the workers and close it and sell or rent the space for a profit.
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Why would Honda, who already operates a multi-billion dollar industry, who already operates 12 plants in the USA with favorable conditions in the states they do business in suddenly not want to build more factories in their second largest global sales region?
They have every incentive here to finish the factories, the factories make them money. I get cynicism in general but this is a case where the public and private incentives and goals are pretty well aligned.
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Christ, kneejerk much? Why the fuck would Biden give money to a company to open plants in Canada (and which "state" is offering incentives for this)? You know that's not the country Biden is the president of, right? Well, don't get pesky facts get in the way of your tribalistic hate, if something doesn't fit your narrative then just invent some "alternative facts" -- it's a real timesaver!
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EVs that out perform gassers on every metric are starting to be produced later this year, The USA is a couple of years behind and it won't happen there until 2026. Tesla is a bit ahead of the curve in the USA, but is not there yet. Superior engineering and not politics (bans and anti-EV sentiment) will lead to EVs dominating new car sales based on consumer demand. They will choose EVs when they have better performance and lower purchase/maintenance costs.
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EVs, eh? Good for goin' oat & aboat, eh?
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Throwing good money after bad. How long will it take before they realize the folly of their sunken cost fallacy?
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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