Discussion

tim-projects: This doesn't mention motorcycles> For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025 (FY2025), motorcycles accounted for about 17% of total revenue, while cars made up around 65%.I wonder what the plan is for motorcycles, where in much of Asia cars aren't really viable and there are no real competitors to Honda engine bikes.

gruez: >and there are no real competitors to Honda engine bikes.e-bikes/mopeds?

SR2Z: Yeah, e-bikes with thumb throttles are so good that the only reason they haven't already supplanted motorcycles is that there are ten bajillion old unkillable motorcycle engines in use.It's a shame that US law doesn't have a nice in-between that would slot these bikes between proper e-bikes and motorcycles.

tim-projects: Ebikes definitely aren't a viable alternative in Asia yet. Most Asian countries either have no charge stations or very few. Range doesn't compare with gas motorcycles.Hundreds of millions of motorcycles are still in active use with no real incentive to change

delecti: Genuine question, could many of them not charge at home? I own an EV and the number of charging stations near me is irrelevant to it because the 120V outlet in my garage is more than sufficient. My naive thinking is that an ebike is an order of magnitude smaller, so surely the same outlet would be even less of a limitation, right? (not to mention that many other countries have ~240V standard outlets)Maybe the answer is truly "no, that wouldn't actually be practical for how people in those places live" for some reason, but I'm genuinely curious.

decimalenough: Nope, they're increasingly viable. Nearly 10M electric scooters/bikes were sold last year, with the top three players being China, India and Vietnam.https://www.motorcyclesdata.com/2026/03/11/electric-motorcyc...

jerlam: Do people really want "software defined vehicles"? People keep repeating how Tesla keeps upgrading their software, but I don't really want my car to change every time I step into it.The person I know who loves FSD has soured on updates since the last one changed how the car handles simple things like intersections, and it's added a lot more stress.Cars should be appliances, boring and reliable, not something to amaze and delight you. Especially since the latter usually changes into "sell ads and your personal information".

nostrademons: We do want software defined vehicles, we just don’t want automatic updates or cars that require an Internet connection to work.

Denatonium: Calling the Prologue "Honda's EV" feels like a huge stretch. The Prologue was a rebadged GM vehicle that served strictly as a compliance car for meeting CAFE standards. Now that the CAFE standards have been rendered toothless, there's no longer a need for that deal.

lenerdenator: There'll be a need to maintain sales if gas prices stay high.

bronlund: I think this is a smart move, the EV boom is soon coming to and end. There is just not possible to make enough batteries or to deliver enough power, for all of us to drive electric.Is it possible to deliver and store electricity in a more efficient way perhaps? Rumor has it that it does, but not in a way you can put a meter on :)

odiroot: I just hope Honda sticks to making awesome motorcycles.

nytesky: Honda is an engine company at its heart. It makes very reliable, long lived engines.They refine technology not really invent it (maybe invented VTEC). The transition to EV will be very gradual, I don’t even think we have enough rare earth metals and electrical grid capacity to go even twice as fast in adoption?Honda is waiting for the standards and technology to settle out and become commodity technology, then they implement and iterate to a refined and reliable product.It doesn’t seem like a winner take all market for EV? What would be the most? Perhaps I am ignorant on that part of market dynamics.*edit for typos

johanvts: Once EVs are economically attractive the transition can be very fast. I live in Denmark so I have seen it, it took 7 years to go from ~5% to 90+% of new cars sold. Both EU and US are now relying on trade barriers to keep Chinese EVs away from consumers.

twelve40: well China debate aside, where are they? i've been dabbling in electrics for over a decade now, on the lower range they are still 30% more expensive than gas cars. Surely someone, anyone outside of China could have done one cheaper by now? Leaf came out 16 years ago and they still can't get it under $30k?

johanvts: I assume you are coming from a US perspective, because smaller economical EVs are available in europe and dominate in asia. America car companies have managed to make a 50k+ truck the average new car purchase. They aren’t going to kill that golden calf voluntarily. Instead they have managed to lock out the competition. Why Musk elected to build another truck instead of the promised model 2 is beyond me. Besides, with EVs you really have to consider total cost, they are still slightly more expensive to buy in the EU as well, but you quickly make it back on fuel.

beaviskhan: Don't forget maintenance costs in the TCO calculation too. Transmissions, fuel pumps, timing belts, radiators (mostly), fuel injectors, emissions systems, etc are all out of the picture in an EV. Servicing those things may be infrequent but is often extremely expensive.

moepstar: > Most Asian countries either have no charge stations or very fewI think Vinfast would like to have a word with you…

mono442: ICE cars are still the majority of new cars being sold and it'll still take a while for EVs to become more popular.

jopsen: That will change.And it must, environmental concerns aside nobody wants to be beholden to oil prices ;)

viccis: >Now that the CAFE standards have been rendered toothlessCan you elaborate on this? I'd love to have a cheap small truck like they used to make, but CAFE largely killed those.

mullingitover: I'm convinced that the Japanese government is terrified of EVs because all the small and medium-sized businesses which support the Japanese auto industry will be absolutely gutted when vehicles contain drastically fewer parts.That, and Japan is deeply screwed if they go all-in on EVs and then China decides they shouldn't be allowed access to any more rare earths.

jasonwatkinspdx: > China decides they shouldn't be allowed access to any more rare earthsThis is a common misunderstanding. There are plenty of alternative locations to mine rare earth minerals, particularly Australia. China cornered the market because it's a high pollution low margin business. If geopolitical concerns cut off access to Chinese sources, alternatives will be developed.

putlake: Mining isn't the only bottleneck with rare earths. There also the processing, which is an industry China has monopolized through sustained investments over decades. They have also improved processing efficiency through investments in technology. It's going to take a while for anyone else to catch up.

UncleOxidant: But isn't Japan deeply screwed if they can't drastically cut their dependence on oil imports?

bdangubic: I think this is the biggest thing that non-EV owners do not understand. Or perhaps they do but not the full scope because money is spent little by little over the years. the oil changes, brakes, belts, starters, alternators, whatevers… I have 2014 Tesla S and I literally spent practically nothing for 11 years. I had to put in a new modem, replaced 12V battery twice and that’s about it. Still on original brakes (102k miles) because with regenerative breaking I hardly ever use the brakes, I mean there is just nothing to spend your money on (I even called Tesla in the beginning of my ownership and was like “do I need to being the car in for something” to be met with “is something wrong with the car? no? why are you calling us then??!” :) ). I will never own a non-EV car again and neither will my kid o anyone in my family

jasonwatkinspdx: Cheap small trucks were killed by the chicken tax, not CAFE.

TrackerFF: I live in a top EV market, Norway.ICE cars have been planned out for years now, and something like 96% of all new cars in Norway were EV last year.Basically, if you plan on keeping selling EVs, you're removing yourself from the market here. There's no future for new personal ICE cars here.I figure most other countries will be the same.

themafia: That's the plan. The reality seems different:https://www.electrive.com/2025/01/09/norway-the-number-of-ne...

walthamstow: Norway is a very special case in that it has massive hydro energy resources and nobody lives there.

reverius42: > hydro energy resourcesWhat is a hydro energy resource, a river? Don't lots of countries have rivers?(If we're talking about hydroelectric power plants they've chosen to build, that's not exactly a resource -- and other countries could choose to build those too, right?)

quickthrowman: Denmark has 6M people. The US has 289M vehicles.

proee: Could it be that the proposed EVs they were planning were just out of touch with what the market wants? Their zero vehicles look butt-ugly in my opinion. They look like concept cars that are great for show, but no serious buyer would consider them for a daily driver.

ta9000: Ironically, Trump attacking Iran and closing the Strait is a boon to China and EV makers. Once the car is produced, aside from lubricants, it’s completely independent of oil. Heck you can put panels on your rooftop and slow charge it during the day.

badpun: Car tires are made with synthetic rubber, which is made from oil.

vel0city: My ICE vehicles go through many more pounds of gasoline than they do tires. A set of tires is ~100lbs of material. 50,000mi of gas on a 30mpg vehicle is 10,000lbs of gas.

seanmcdirmid: > There also the processing, which is an industry China has monopolized through sustained investments over decades.I don't think this is the right way to characterize it. China invested when other countries didn't, but they didn't monopolize the market, they have no moat beyond expertise and some tech advancement that could be replicated easily enough. The only moat they have is related perseverance and other countries simply not wanting to put the work in.

bko: Or they're unprofitable and highly competitive.Ford: It recorded a loss of $1.2 billion in EBIT in the third quarter on its EVs, bringing its losses on the segment for the first three quarters of 2024 to $3.7 billionHonda: Honda to Write Off $15.7 Billion as EV Winter Arrives.https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-r...https://www.barrons.com/articles/gm-stock-general-motors-inv...https://www.barrons.com/articles/honda-to-write-off-15-7-bil...

reverius42: And how many new EVs did China make in the last 5 years?

jacquesm: > I figure most other countries will be the same.Most other countries are not Norway, it is a tiny market and not representative of the typical vehicle market in Western Europe and definitely not representative of the situation in the rest of the world.EVs are the future, there is no doubt about that. But that future will not arrive everywhere at the same point in time and Norway is very far ahead of the rest of the world due to a fairly unique set of circumstances: exporting your own oil and gas to be able to have a 'clean' (and up to recently heavily subsidized) transportation network is in a way just a gigantic bookkeeping trick.

SupremumLimit: Sure, but there is also China where over half of new vehicle sales are EVs. Denmark is at 70%, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and the Netherlands are all above 50%, a bunch of other countries in the EU are at one third EVs. In India, 5% of sales are EVs but that is double of the year before and all the big car manufacturers in India are now offering EVs. Even Australia is at 14% after stalling on EVs for years. So change is unfolding quite quickly compared to previous years. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ev-share-new-car-sales-by-c...

ascorbic: You need both the right geography and a lack of either people or democracy in the place you want to build it. That rules out new large hydro projects in most of Europe.

theappsecguy: Building hydro energy requires a very specific geography. You can't just take any river and turn it into an efficient hydroplant.

boringg: Interesting but North America has different needs for vehicles. Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens.I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future.FWIW downvoters - I have a PHEV - but I live in the real world and a likely future!

reverius42: > Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens.I don't know about the whole national electric grid, but at my house, I didn't really have to upgrade anything and didn't even notice an increase in electric bill when I started plugging in my EV. I don't think my car is even 20% of my household electricity usage. I'd hope we can increase our national grid's capability by at least 20% in the next 20 years. (Also, aren't datacenters causing that massive demand right now, whether or not the upgrades are even there yet? As I understand this is causing massive price increases?)> I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future.As you kind of hint at, whether or not the vehicle is EV or ICE has nothing to do with whether it has subscription models, tracking, etc. and car manufacturers are racing towards both of those things in a way that makes the drivetrain irrelevant.

boringg: Two points.1. Infra will need to upgrade in order to handle heavy charging in neighborhoods with wholesale change in the fleet. It would change our electrical use model considerably in terms of times of use -- and we would be adding all the energy used from gas powered cars to the electrical grid - which is somewhat significant.2. While you are correct technically -- I think what I am implying is older cars (ICE) will be the ones without all the tracking and software - whereas all EVs will have that embedded as they are all relatively new. There is no world where they remove that from new car production.

lukan: Norway has really a lots of rivers with lots of potential energy of the water, since it comes from the mountains at high altitude (Fjords).Some big slow moving river in a flat land on the other hand is not helping you here.

billfor: "Here, Honda is setting itself up for failure on the second disruption sweeping the automotive industry: the software-defined vehicle (SDV), which has core capabilities that can be upgraded and improved over time."I'll pay triple for a non software defined vehicle that doesn't track me and can't be touched by the dealer once I purchase it.

observationist: There are also non rare earth magnets being explored. Niron - Iron nitride - magnets and ultrasonic compaction and other tech that wasn't feasible a while back are now becoming very practical. Japan could probably get to a dominant place with a solid research program, it'd give them a huge advantage for EVs and other motors.

mitthrowaway2: Yeah, it's impossible. Also, China is making them too cheap to compete with, and in such quantity that they're basically dumping them and flooding the market. We have to enact laws and trade barriers to keep them out, or else we'll be drowning in them. Plus don't forget it's impossible to make that many EVs in the first place.

mempko: You are right. We don't need more EVs. Lets get rid of cars completely and built cheap electrified public transport. Make ICE cars illiegal. Going all EV won't help the environment. Going all public transport would.

MarkusWandel: My Honda family car has a CVT and electric parking brakes. "Driver's Car" mattered more when the low-price option was a stickshift and cars weren't so heavy.

kleiba: Not Germany.

celsoazevedo: I worry a bit for German car manufacturers. The future isn't ICE cars, especially in a continent without oil.

bryanlarsen: OTOH, it really looks like Toyota is Goldilocks. Most companies invested too much too early and had to write off a substantial amount, but Toyota is rolling into 2027 with a small but nice selection of EV's.Over 25% of vehicles sold world-wide were electric in 2025, and that percentage is steadily increasing. So VW & Ford were "too hot", Honda is looking like "too cold" and Toyota might be the "just right" of the three bears.

storus: Are they killing their EVs because of vibrations?

margalabargala: Not just a river, a river plus either an elevation drop or a drownable valley.A river winding along a flat plain is not a hydro energy resource. A river in the same valley as your capital city is not a hydro energy resource.

codazoda: I just got a Honda Hybrid. It doesn’t phone home or do updates automatically, as far as I can tell, and I love this.

piva00: Also going to suffer a demographic crunch, having fewer jobs in more advanced technology would suit well with a shrunk labour force.

BrandoElFollito: Not to mention how adverse they are to foreign workforce

neogodless: Where does that leave GM?

throwaway5752: And massive oil resources. As a result of this, one of the wealthiest sovereign wealth funds on the planet, which they manage well and for the good of the country.Their hydro energy company is an aluminum company company, they have so much slack power they export it refining bauxite.It is worth repeating solar panels covering an area about the size of NJ generate enough power to supply all current entire US energy needs.

wisplike: Dont forget about good old externally excited motors like what Renault uses, no rare earths needed.

tim-tday: The wind is just blowing back towards internal combustion for the moment. A couple years and they will shift again. Killing the whole research project would be dumb. Killing current models makes some sense.

ascorbic: Maybe in the US, but not elsewhere. EVs are still very much in the ascendant in the rest of the world.

hangonhn: I think they do have a moat because they dominate the supply chain not just in the raw material and processing but also in some of the actual technical experience, i.e. the experience of running such processing facilities, and also a monopoly on making the equipment that you need to build such a facility. They put export controls on those equipment and restricted their citizens who work in the rare earths industry from traveling aboard.Basically, if we want to replicate what they did, we will have to do it mostly from scratch -- Japan and Australia has done some of the work already so it's not totally from scratch. It's obviously not impossible but it could take almost a decade for us to do that.That said, I don't think this should be enough for Japan to stop investing in EVs. If Japanese car makers are really worried about this then they can build their plants in the US and leverage any deal the US has with China on real earths. They've already starting importing Japanese cars made in India and the US back to Japan so that's an established practice. Then once they've secured their own supplies they can make the EVs in Japan too. I think OP's point about the suppliers have more merit as a reason why Japan might not want to develop EVs.

fakedang: I have worked with the Chinese REE industry, and we've often bumped heads and shared ideas together with them and I can confidently tell you, the Chinese don't use anything novel that has not been established in Western science already. What they do have is executing rarely-used techniques confidently at scale, but all of that is already often published in the West. The only reason the West hasn't done it is because these techniques are less profitable, and, surprise, the CCP actually forces processors to minimize ecological damage, which further bumps up the costs to the point only large-scale players can exist making such lower profits. You'll often find them using some obscure process alteration that was published minutely in the West.As an addendum, companies in the REE Sinosphere are often encouraged by the CCP to exchange ideas with each other quite often, while Western companies often lock them behind proprietary patents and competition. While both systems have their pros and cons, the former allows for faster process proliferation (and a lower profit incentive for the innovator).

WarmWash: >Heck you can put panels on your rooftop and slow charge it during the day.The breakeven for this is so bad that it's only worth it for the gullible "wow" factor from the general public asking about it.

getpokedagain: The software designed car and continued price growth of automobiles is going to push them out of price range for consumers. Maybe Honda just wants to go out of a dying industry on good terms.

epolanski: I hate those narratives that if you don't jump on EVs, your future is doomed.The last 5 years just don't show it. The EV market is still small and infrastructure missing in most of the world.Toyota played it safe and made bank when everybody was saying they were doomed.German automakers went hard on EVs. VW group sold 1 million fully electric vehicles in 2025, they will probably overtake Tesla in a couple of years for the biggest non-Chinese EV automaker by sales, but is it paying off financially?At the same time german premium brands have a very hard time differentiating when Chinese cars offer similar quality at half the price even after tariffs.

tpm: If you want to sell cars in the EU you have no future without EVs. The fleet emmision fines are quite high already, will be much higher from 2030 and will kick in from 0g CO2/km from 2035, basically killing any ICE passenger vehicle. That's in 8,5 years.

jmclnx: Worldwide ? Seems so from the article.But my guess is maybe Honda will wait for Tesla or another US based auto company with EVs to fail and buy that company. Seems that is how large companies do "innovation" these days.

speedgoose: As realistic as Toshiba purchasing Apple.

onraglanroad: Norway has roughly the population of the average US state. So I guess no-one really lives in the USA.

kypro: 0.1% of the population is pretty close to 0% to be fair.

coryrc: What's wrong with following motorcycle regulations?

Spivak: Because e-bikes have effectively done regulatory arbitrage and the sky didn't fall. You want more people using small electric vehicles where before they would have used a car, you lower the burden to get one on the road.

tmnvix: As I understand it, some of these processes also require a sufficiently large industrial base to be even remotely economical due to a reliance on industrial 'byproduct' (for want of a better word). Because of this, some of these processes are not something that can be quickly stood up in isolation over a few years. It would take concerted large scale planning over a long time period - something the Chinese system of government is almost uniquely capable of.

hamdingers: For the buyer: street legal electric motorcycles are outlandishly expensive compared to equivalent gas onesFor the manufacturer: you have to compete with significantly cheaper illegal bikes, in an environment where there is virtually no enforcement of regulation, so being street legal is not an advantage

simulator5g: Actually it does do that. They sell your driving data to your insurance company & government.

classichasclass: I also recently bought a Honda hybrid. I turned off as many of the data sharing features as I could from the first day I drove it. They don't make it easy, of course.

GardenLetter27: Damn, the Honda E looked great.

ryanhuff: FSD is great for me, although I mostly use it on the highways. But 90% of my driving is FSD now. It can be more conservative for my tastes with street driving

Nition: There must be more to it than this, or we'd have fantastic EV uptake here in New Zealand (we don't - EVs currently only have a 6% market share).

walthamstow: As other siblings have said, it's also very rich and offers mega tax breaks for EVs.Out of interest, do you mean 6% of cars on the road of 6% of new cars sold last year?

speedgoose: You can but affordable simple EVs in many markets. Not all EVs target the premium segment.

steve-atx-7600: “Many automakers have found that dropping batteries into a car originally designed for an internal combustion engine”. Reminds me of idiotic hybrid variants of Subaru and Honda vehicles that don’t have spare tires because the battery was slapped into the existing vehicle platform as an afterthought. Eg. Subaru forester hybrid. Car bought by educated, practical folks.

raegis: New Honda Accord hybrids do not include a spare tire. The manufacturers copied the idiocy.

designerarvid: And lots of bad conscious from all the oil.

mperham: > My Tesla is still on FSD from 2023 because the newer versions are terrible judging from the comments on the Tesla forums.I've had FSD since 2020; the latest version is noticeably better than 2020. I wouldn't put too much stock in forums which tend to skew negative.

billfor: 2023 is better than 2020. 2026 is not necessarily better than 2023. Shifting speeds abruptly in the modern FSD notwithstanding, what happened especially for people with HW 2.5/3 (circa 2018/19) is the change in behavior of adaptive cruise control and FSD -- you can go look it up. Essentially they "removed" a useful feature that let the car seemlesly move between the two -- I think because they didn't want to support the drivers "stalk" on the steering wheel anymore - new Teslas don't have it. So basically for me, SDV is not all that it's cracked up to be.

speedgoose: I expected better from the company that entered the EV market with an impressive aquarium simulator in its Honda E.Time will tell, but I think it’s a long term mistake.

celsoazevedo: lol. Their new F1 engine seems to be a mess (I'm assuming you're referring to that).

storus: Yes, precisely. /r/formula1 was not leaking here yet ;-)

fpoling: For Toyota a spare tyre became on optional extra in Europe even on ICE models. They charge 200-300 Euro for having it.

Yizahi: EVs are fine and dandy, but it is a luxury class of cars for now and it shows really. Most other countries are far far away from mass deployment of EVs or restricting ICE cars. EVs can win if either a) the car is cheaper than the same class ICE, or b) operational expenses of using EV car would be cheaper. Neither of which is happening yet. And the car do need to have some advantage, since EVs already come with inherent disadvantage of long and inconvenient charging, small batteries, limited locations for charging with buggy and broken stations, not working apps or cards etc.

slfnflctd: Observers and technologists have also consistently failed to appreciate the continuing value proposition of hybrids, and Toyota makes some of the best, top selling models.

Consumers, mostly those who buy EVs from the likes of Tesla, Rivian, and BYD, have grown accustomed to the frequent updates, slick infotainment software, and advanced driver-assistance systems.

kleiba: > Consumers, mostly those who buy EVs from the likes of Tesla, Rivian, and BYD, have grown accustomed to the frequent updates, slick infotainment software, and advanced driver-assistance systems.Guess which three items out of that list I do not want.

travismark: trick question. all three

speedgoose: You don’t like active safety features ? Even if you think you are great and better than most, don’t you think it would be neat that the other drivers you share the roads with, have active safety features ?