And, a recent tour of one of the Asian powerhouse’s vehicle plants has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt, at least to Honda President and CEO Toshihiro Mibe.
“We have no chance against this,” Mibe said upon a visit to a Shanghai parts factory, commenting on its seamless automation across all levels of production. Logistics, procurement and all aspects of the process were so automated, in fact, that he did not spot a single human worker on the supplier’s floor.
Ford executives saying even three years ago that China was way ahead of the game
Toyota’s CEO has likewise said regarding not just his company, but the industry in general, “unless things change, we will not survive”
They did. The Honda e was the perfect tiny EV, except for its massive price tag and small-ish range. And of course, in classic Honda fashion, as a promising but flawed attempt didn’t succeed immediately, they promptly abandoned the segment instead of capitalizing on acquired knowledge, battery technology advances and price drops. Given how successful the Renault 5 is, I’m pretty sure a 2nd gen e at half the price would have been a massive success.
Of course, being Honda, they changed their mind and came back with a significantly worse SUV.
They would probably not have managed to slash the price in half with one generation.
The original Honda E was € 35.330 in 2020, which was a difficult sell given the small 170km range.
Half price would mean an electric car for ~€ 18.000
Looking at other Western manufacturers (e.g. Peugeot, Citroen, Volkswagen, Dacia) for a fair comparison, that is a stretch even today. Most EVs don’t really go below 20k, and 25k seems to be the current range for affordable EVs.
The issue is largely the cost of the battery. That cost has come down over the years, but not to the extent that Honda could have suddenly slashed the price of their EV in half.
Edit: That is not to say Honda shouldn’t have kept releasing more EVs.
I’m just pointing out that they probably would follow the same path as the other Western automakers that have pretty consistently been releasing EVs over the past decade orso.
So it wasn’t even close to being perfect was it? Those are like the two most important aspects
No perfect in a cute little way