(Tokyo) The second Japanese car manufacturer Honda and the American General Motors announced on Thursday that they were abandoning their plan to jointly manufacture “affordable” electric vehicles, the sale of which was to begin in 2027.
“After extensive studies and analysis, we have mutually decided to terminate the program,” the two groups said in a joint statement, adding that both “remain committed to making the electric vehicle market affordable.” .
Honda and GM announced last spring this project to jointly develop a new line of electric vehicles at “affordable and desirable” prices by combining their mutual technologies.
“After studying the issue for a year, we decided it would be a difficult undertaking. So we put an end to the project, Honda president Toshihiro Mibe said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
Honda has clarified that it remains “focused” on its objective of achieving 100% of its global sales in electric vehicles by 2040.
General Motors is currently affected, like the two other American giants Ford and Stellantis, by a social movement which it estimates to have weighed to the tune of 200 million dollars on its operating profit in the third quarter, and decided on Tuesday to withdraw its forecast of annual results.
In a message sent to its shareholders this week on the occasion of its quarterly results, the American said it wanted to “moderate the acceleration of the production of electric vehicles in North America in order to protect our prices, to adapt to the slowdown short-term demand growth and implement technical improvements […] which will make our vehicles less costly to produce and more profitable.”
GM and Honda have been collaborating on various projects for several years, notably around the autonomous vehicle company Cruise, in which GM owns the majority of shares and in which Honda has invested.
They announced last week their intention to launch a commercial driverless taxi service in Japan at the beginning of 2026, which will start in the center of Tokyo with a few dozen Cruise Origin vehicles, a 100% autonomous model, and could subsequently be extended.