This month, Honda announced it would team up with GM to sell millions of co-developed “affordable” EVs. And last month, Honda said it will partner with Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp. to market co-developed EVs from 2025.
The 2 million EVs that Honda expects to produce in 2030 represent about 40 percent of that year’s 5 million-vehicle global output plan. But the Japanese carmaker, which now sells about 4.5 million vehicles a year worldwide, has a long way to go before going pure BEV.
To date, it has sold only 32,678 battery-electrics, cumulatively, since marketing its first, the Honda EV Plus, in 1997. Almost half of those sales, 14,324, came in 2021 alone.
The automaker has made a much bigger dent with hybrids, a segment it helped pioneer with the Insight. It has sold 3.91 million hybrids cumulatively over the years, including 561,165 gasoline-electrics in 2021.
The limited-run EV Plus, a squat three-door microcar, was Honda’s first EV, but the battery-powered version of the low-selling Clarity sedan was the first to be marketed in the U.S.
Today, its only all-electric offering for international sales is the Honda e urban runabout. It has sold 8,729 of those subcompact hatchbacks in Europe and Japan through the end of 2021, including 4,171 last year. Honda also sells three locally focused EV models in the China market.