It’s not demand. This was a joint project with GM, with US batteries made under investments by Biden, killed by Trump. House of cards and Trump kicked out the bottom with tariffs.
It IS demand. New EV sales in Canada have dropped drastically in the last year since most of the subsides are gone. From about 14% of new car sales to about 9%. Without subsidies theres not enough demand to justify the huge investment in building them. Source: Statscan https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260316/dq260316c-eng.htm
Company who pays little more than lip service to EV market closes plant as EV demand surges.
It’ll certainly set them up for when Trump is thrown out, and give them manufacturing experience on the global market. Right?
Why blame Honda? They setup a deal with GM and US battery plants and USMCA trade. Trump fucked all that.
Meanwhile, Americans and Canadians did NOT buy Leafs or Bolts. In total, GM sold 25,000 EVs while CDNs bought 180,000 Ford F150s, 54,000 Silverados and 43,000 Dodge Rams.
Fucking 10:1 , then Lemmy’s man buns are getting unraveled when car makers don’t want to lose money on EVs.
Think BYD will save the day? Think again.
Yep. I live in a northern city and there are more pickups than cars, and seeing an EV is a rarity. There are couple of Teslas and ONE Cybertruck that I think the guy bought because its a great advertisement to be the only one in a city of 60,000. People LOVE their pickups - EVs? Not so much.
Honda needs new leadership. They’re already talking about how they will fail because they can’t compete with BYD. Yeah, well you can’t compete if you don’t even try, clearly. It’s sad that Honda will die because they refuse to go electric, when the original Insight hybrid was so forward thinking.
original Insight hybrid was so forward thinking
it was a piece of shit compliance car. Prius was a serious car.
compliance car
I’ve never heard that, what’s the deal there?
EVs that were built by companies to comply with a gov requirement to build a certain percentage of their vehicles as EVs. Example: The 2013-2019 Fiat 500 was a gas car but Stellantis also built it as an EV. It looks nearly identical, almost all body parts are the same but the drivetrain.
I meant specifically about the Insight.
I was reading a Japanese interview with Honda about how they are so proud of their history of innovation: that they were the first to create the bipedal humanoid robot.
Wow, great job. You did shit all with that lead you had and now the Chinese are beating you in every way. I hate living in Japan sometimes. Everyone is living in the past. We can’t just survive on exporting anime, games, sushi, ramen, and tourism.
Big oil is always going to continue bribing politicians to keep the demand for dino juice cars going.
Oh the term isn’t bribing it is sponsoring? Hmm wonder how I got that one wrong? /s
If there was one car brand (other than Toyota) that could make EVs more affordable and accessible to the masses, it would be Honda. An electric Civic would sell like crazy.
Meanwhile, the brand that’s actually making EVs affordable and accessible to the masses is BYD.
Chevrolet Bolt. $CDN43K.
Nissan Leaf $CDN 48K
BYDs will not be cheaper than this in Canada.
In Europe, they start at 25K euro , but typically 45K euro, or $CDN40-65K.
You will not buy an EV in Canada for under $40K. Our dollar is worth shit.
Electric cycles, scooters, and other micromobility already exist as EVs a hundredfold more affordable than electric cars.
Not as useful in more northern climates
Why not? No issues in Canada, Finland, or Sweden that I’ve seen.
E-bikes etc are great, but they’re no replacement for cars, both because of the weather and because of cities designed around commuting by car for decades. We need to electrify the vehicles people use and that infrastructure has been built for.
Or we can reduce our infrastructure costs and make it easier to people to move around without needing to own a car. Maybe reduce some of that Euclidean zoning that forces so many to need to drive in the first place.
Cars were no replacement for pedal bikes when I lived in Yellowknife. Car just didn’t work on the cold, or required massive costs to preheat before driving. Walking and biking you just went.
Cars were great (and necessary) for getting out of the city in the summer though.
I’m all for urban density and reducing new suburban sprawl, but it already exists. Yellowknife isn’t a very representative example.
TOKYO – Honda Motor is set to freeze plans to build an electric vehicle factory in Canada, Nikkei has learned, as sluggish U.S. demand pushes it to put hybrids at the center of its North American strategy.
That’s the whole post. It would have been nice if they’d mentioned how long it would take to get the factory online, given that US demand could pick up if the next president isn’t so hostile to EVs and the environment in general.
