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Two Honda battery-electric crossovers will be built by General Motors in the next four years. A Honda will be built at a GM plant in Mexico, and an Acura alongside the Cadillac Lyriq in Tennessee.
In an Automotive News report, it was noted that in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, where GM builds the Chevrolet Blazer and Equinox, the Honda crossover will start in 2023. GM was rumored to be retooling the plant for EV production by 2024, but this has not been confirmed.
2024 is when the Acura crossover production is scheduled for GM’s Spring Hill, Tennessee assembly plant, according to unnamed sources. Both crossovers are expected to be about the size of the Lyriq, which is planned to go on sale in early 2022.
GM’s Ultium batteries, which have a maximum range of 450 miles, will power the Honda and Acura vehicles. More than 5 million EVs will be Ultium-powered by 2040, more than 1 million of which are not GM products, Morgan Stanley estimates.
Honda wrapped up the year with a 4.2 percent gain in December for trucks, a record for electrified vehicles, and a double record for Passport. Led by 24,406 CR-V Hybrids, and 18,229 Accord Hybrid sales, Honda posted record sales of electrified vehicles for the third straight year, with 62,982 in total for 2020.
Neither GM nor American Honda would comment about their respective company’s product plans, signaling perhaps a decided shift in EV strategy, and ramped-up measures to bring them to fruition faster.
[Images: American Honda]
I didn’t see that coming, but I suppose it makes a kind of sense. Honda badly needs some EV cred and at least GM has the Volt with more to come, so with them working together perhaps they’ll get to where they need to go quicker.
Honda has invested in GM in recent years. The problem with the Japanese they got used placaded and kicking the can down the road with little investment. I mean GM has had 2.0T since 2006 and Honda just came out with one in 2018.
Sourcing anything from GM should be the nail in the coffin for Acura.
@Cicero: “Sourcing anything from GM should be the nail in the coffin for Acura.”
nah. Honda nailed that coffin lid down tight years ago. This is just the final tug to validate that yes indeed, that lid’s not going anywhere. Time to lower it into the ground.
When I read the headline, my first thought was “oh–nothing could go wrong there. Seriously–because Honda’s been at the GM level for years now. This makes perfect sense.”
Remember when you could get a steal of a deal on a Pontiac Vibe because it said Pontiac on it, never mind that what you actually got was a Matrix (arguably one of Toyota’s finest cars)?
Now you’ll pay boatloads more for a GM truck because it has a Honda label on it.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!
This is an admission of how expensive it is to go it alone, and it’s also a way to hedge their bets on volume.
GM obviously doesn’t believe its own claims for future EV volume, so they have to achieve some economies of scale by consolidating production of multiple brands under one roof. Same for H/A, except that they’re letting GM do the development.
In the end, they’ll all produce money-losing, low-volume vehicles that they can walk away from when the beancounters tighten the leash.
BTW, is the UAW going to be building Acuras now? Now they get a taste of what keeping the plant open means – it means building cars for the competition. Ha!
I wondered why my Tesla stock went up today…
Don’t laugh – Tesla may be next. If 2020 taught us nothing else, it’s that anything is possible – no matter how bizarre or dysfunctional.
Keep in mind this is not the first time Honda/Acura were behind in a market and found a stopgap partner to fill in until they produced their own. In the mid-90’s Isuzu rebadged a Trooper as the Acura SLX and a Rodeo as the Honda Passport until Honda was in a position to bring out the Acura MDX and Honda Pilot within a few years. I don’t think either were huge sellers but it gave their dealers a placeholder for the time being.
How is this news? It was announced back in April. If people are surprised, they just have short memories. Oh, and since then, Honda and GM announced co-operation on batteries and on fuel cells. TTAC search function is lousy, so here’s a link:
https://www.carparts.com/blog/gm-honda-team-up-to-make-2-new-evs/
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2020/09/gm-honda-alliance-quite-possibly-both-automakers-just-signed-an-mou/
Two thoughts:
a) Honda is dangerously close to being an OEM With No Real Plan For the Future™ [there may be others – can you name them?].
b) Every couple of decades the OEM’s go through a phase of navel-gazing where they sit around and wonder out loud which part of their business is “core” and which part is “non-core” – expect agreements like this one to trigger some of that.
b) shouldn’t they always be doing that (reassessing what is ‘core’). IIRC, Honda started by building parts for Toyotas, then motorcycles, then cars. If they didn’t reassess what Honda’s about- they’d still just be making parts for others. Not trying to be snarky- just recalling business classes from 30 years ago.
“shouldn’t they always be doing that”
The important thing is not to do what you should be doing, but to express the appropriate level of outrage when it becomes painfully obvious that what you were supposed to be doing never got done.
Timely example:
https://tinyurl.com/yyb9cu9s
tl;dr: There may have been a “lack of preparedness” – but California, Florida and Ohio are on it (see Lofgren, Demings and Ryan comments). [One of them used the “d—” word, so we know they are serious and we can all relax now.]
Saturn Spring Hill used Honda v6 engines and transmissions in the 04-07 Saturn Vue, most people that bought one didn’t realize it!
V6 engines and automatic transmissions, outsourcing the one thing that GM did well to a company that did everything else well but those things really poorly.
Oh, GM.
Wasn’t it BMW and Volvo that used a 5T60 GM auto trans?
Now GM V6 makes 350 hp or more than a 1997 C5 Corvette 5.7l! Maybe back in 2006 when GM had a +300 trq 2.0T they should have loaned it too Honda instead of waiting until 2018 Accord.
Seems like a logical step for both companies. Nobody wants to be last in the EV game and nobody wants to bear all of the cost for the EV gamble. That is what it is at this point until adoption hits a critical mass.
I am surprised more automakers aren’t forming similar alliances in this early stage of electrification.
I’m sorry, but the old copy editor in me is compelled to point out that basic English usage on this site has really started to suffer.
Case in point: “In an Automotive News report, it was noted that in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, where GM builds the Chevrolet Blazer and Equinox, the Honda crossover will start in 2023.”
Take out the middle part of the sentence (which is about Ramos Arzipe and the other cars built there), and you get the following shortened sentence: “In an Automotive News report, the Honda crossover WILL START (emphasis mine) in 2023.” I believe the writer was trying to say that production of the car will start in 2023, but the way the sentence is structured, he is literally saying that the car will start in 2023. Well, I certainly hope it starts; a car that won’t start isn’t going to sell well.
I’m not trying to be grammar Nazi. But this is, in essence, a newspaper. The English in newspapers should be clear, concise and correct. Otherwise, the newspaper’s credibility suffers. I’d suggest this writer needs to pay closer attention to his grammar, or have someone do some copy editing on his pieces.
Indeed. Also, that one sentence, which is full of commas and multiple subjects, should have been broken up into 2 or 3 sentences.
I’m an editor myself, Mike. Your comments are appropriate but don’t expect anything to change. Without trying to slam the people at TTAC, the current environment means traditional editing is probably too expensive. In addition, I’m sure most pieces on this site are written by people with day jobs. Honest mistakes or oversights due to rushing things are always possible. It doesn’t help that most people raised in the Age of the Internet haven’t received thorough grammatical training. But I suspect it’s mostly overlooked mistakes because writers are overworked or in a hurry. They’d probably agree with your remarks.
Feels like an April Fool’s article.
We’ve been waited with baited breath for Thornmark to show…