Honda is killing its EVs – and any chance of competing in the future
techcrunch.com29 points by sylvainkalache 9 hours ago
29 points by sylvainkalache 9 hours ago
Do people really want "software defined vehicles"? People keep repeating how Tesla keeps upgrading their software, but I don't really want my car to change every time I step into it.
The person I know who loves FSD has soured on updates since the last one changed how the car handles simple things like intersections, and it's added a lot more stress.
Cars should be appliances, boring and reliable, not something to amaze and delight you. Especially since the latter usually changes into "sell ads and your personal information".
1000% agree.
Sadly, this view is considered antiquated and anti-technology by a younger generation of people who think what we see in sci-fi shows should be reality (good or bad). And if you don't get that vision then you're some dumb luddite who should be banished from society.
What's kind of remarkable is the onslaught of vehicles, many EV, which have critical functionality issues that are being ignored, but they have WiFi + hotspot on board! And if you want to do basic things with your own vehicle, like get the climate control ready before you leave on a trip you now need an app, a smartphone, and Internet connection and a subscription...to do things that could easily be done via some local BLE or WiFi connection.
I see a lot of car companies rush to make "immersive" driving experiences while neglecting the basics. The Ioniq 5 / EV6 have ICCU issues that are not addressed which can leave the car stranded and the replacement parts have the same mysterious failure modes, the Jaguar I-Pace had numerous failures including a UI that would lag for basic things like changing air conditioning settings, the last generation Leaf (just prior to the current re-design) has battery issues that have forced people to do lemon-law buy backs, the Ford Mach E has a Tesla-style iPad center display that can't be turned off at night so it's a distraction (among other issues with the poor concept), but it has OTA so awesome!
All the updates (so far…) have added features that I actually like. Things like Apple Music integration and even safety things like cross-traffic alerts when reversing.
Even today my wife left her phone on the charge pad and the car beeped as we walked away to alert us - a feature that didn’t exist when we first got it.
Enshittification may come, but maybe there will be an Apple-like benevolent dictator that keeps it mostly clean.
Edit: I should say that I will never trust any “self-driving” at all based on cameras alone. It can’t even do Autopilot without me intervening on most trips.
> Do people really want "software defined vehicles"?
Absolutely, the sooner the better. The truth is, auto companies can track you, show you ads, and otherwise jerk you around without going all the way to having a "software defined vehicle." You just get a worse user experience.
> Cars should be appliances, boring and reliable
Agree, but then how do you get people to change them?
This doesn't mention motorcycles
> For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025 (FY2025), motorcycles accounted for about 17% of total revenue, while cars made up around 65%.
I wonder what the plan is for motorcycles, where in much of Asia cars aren't really viable and there are no real competitors to Honda engine bikes.
>and there are no real competitors to Honda engine bikes.
e-bikes/mopeds?
Yeah, e-bikes with thumb throttles are so good that the only reason they haven't already supplanted motorcycles is that there are ten bajillion old unkillable motorcycle engines in use.
It's a shame that US law doesn't have a nice in-between that would slot these bikes between proper e-bikes and motorcycles.
I hate those narratives that if you don't jump on EVs, your future is doomed.
The last 5 years just don't show it. The EV market is still small and infrastructure missing in most of the world.
Toyota played it safe and made bank when everybody was saying they were doomed.
German automakers went hard on EVs. VW group sold 1 million fully electric vehicles in 2025, they will probably overtake Tesla in a couple of years for the biggest non-Chinese EV automaker by sales, but is it paying off financially?
At the same time german premium brands have a very hard time differentiating when Chinese cars offer similar quality at half the price even after tariffs.
Is your point that the western car companies are doomed no matter how aggressively they jump into EVs now, and that Chinese EV producers have too much of a lead for them to recover, or that they have time to catch up later and can take it slow for now?
China is already selling EVs to countries that haven’t even had many cars before, like Nepal. Is 75% of the world car market just going to be there’s because western auto manufacturers overfixated on their own very mature car markets?
Honda is an engine company at its heart. It makes very reliable, long lived engines.
They refine technology not really invent it (maybe invented VTEC). The transition to EV will be very gradual, I don’t even think we have enough rare earth metals and electrical grid capacity to go even twice as fast in adoption?
Honda is waiting for the standards and technology to settle out and become commodity technology, then they implement and iterate to a refined and reliable product.
It doesn’t seem like a winner take all market for EV? What would be the most? Perhaps I am ignorant on that part of market dynamics.
*edit for typos
Once EVs are economically attractive the transition can be very fast. I live in Denmark so I have seen it, it took 7 years to go from ~5% to 90+% of new cars sold. Both EU and US are now relying on trade barriers to keep Chinese EVs away from consumers.
well China debate aside, where are they? i've been dabbling in electrics for over a decade now, on the lower range they are still 30% more expensive than gas cars. Surely someone, anyone outside of China could have done one cheaper by now? Leaf came out 16 years ago and they still can't get it under $30k?
I assume you are coming from a US perspective, because smaller economical EVs are available in europe and dominate in asia. America car companies have managed to make a 50k+ truck the average new car purchase. They aren’t going to kill that golden calf voluntarily. Instead they have managed to lock out the competition. Why Musk elected to build another truck instead of the promised model 2 is beyond me. Besides, with EVs you really have to consider total cost, they are still slightly more expensive to buy in the EU as well, but you quickly make it back on fuel.
> I don’t even think we have enough rare earth metals and electrical grid capacity to go even twice as fast in adoption?
This is not an issue, it’s the one the things that the anti-EV/baby boomer crowd throws out that is completely unsubstantiated. We have plenty of rare earths, America just lit their rare earth refining capacity on fire when China said they would do it for us at a much cheaper price. China doesn’t have a shortage of rare earth refining capacity, and they are producing most of the Eavs in the world as a result. EVs mostly charge at night when the grid is underutilized anyways.
China won the EV war a few years ago while the Japanese spent too much wasted time on hydrogen. Honda just doesn’t have anything to offer that BYD already does much better. That the Chinese auto manufacturers will slow down EV advancements and refinements long enough for Honda to make a significant improvement is a bit ridiculous.
Ironically, Trump attacking Iran and closing the Strait is a boon to China and EV makers. Once the car is produced, aside from lubricants, it’s completely independent of oil. Heck you can put panels on your rooftop and slow charge it during the day.
> you can put panels on your rooftop and slow charge it during the day
The real Mad Max will be roaming the apocalyptic wasteland in a Kia EV5.
Car tires are made with synthetic rubber, which is made from oil.
With where the Trumpists want to take us, tires made out of carved stone will suffice. Non-EVs will be retrofitted with a hole in the floor for your feet.
ICE cars are still the majority of new cars being sold and it'll still take a while for EVs to become more popular.
The biggest EV car is Tesla and they aren't good and tesla isn't a car company, its a finance comapny. Like Intel lost its edge because it became finance first engineering almost never. And no one wants a >$20k car. Disposable energy oil or not, manufacturers went nuts in 2020, and just kept pushing prices up and can't figure out why cars aren't selling.
BYD Auto is the worlds biggest, and their cars are affordable and their battery tech is evolving rapidly -- just recently announced batteries that can effectively recharge in the same time it takes to fill up one's gas tank.
They are an unstoppable force and we ignore them at our own peril.
The wind is just blowing back towards internal combustion for the moment. A couple years and they will shift again. Killing the whole research project would be dumb. Killing current models makes some sense.
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yes, everyone knows that a human head cannot hold both information about CO2 and information about cars