By Steven Symes 
There’s no doubt the EV market has cooled, which has caused Honda to walk back from its aggressive electrification plans. Instead, the Japanese automaker says it will lean into hybrids, something rival Toyota has been doing with great success.
GM claims to have revolutionary EV battery tech.
Originally, Honda was aiming to have 30 percent of global vehicle sales be electric cars by 2030. That goal coincided with EV mandates, either explicit or implicit, pushed by federal and state governments in the US.
However, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said his company’s slashing of its EV development investments from 10 trillion yen through 2031 to 7 trillion yen doesn’t change the automaker’s long term electrification strategy, per The Detroit News.
Now that consumers aren’t going to be forced into buying electric vehicles, automakers are having to pivot. We tried warning the industry before that forcing people to buy EVs was a bad idea, but the bandwagon and groupthink mentalities were strong just two years ago.
While The Detroit News seems to blame Trump for the cooling EV market, the reality is quite different. Automakers would be wise to realize that consumers are tired of being told what they should buy and especially of being forced into new technologies, like electrification.
Trump has just tapped into this market sentiment. Even as used EV values were plummeting back in December 2023, many in the auto industry as well as the media behaved like the electrification party would never end.
Exactly how Honda will handle this short term transition wasn’t spelled out by Mibe, only that it will start churning out a lot more hybrids. Of course, the automaker has a long history of developing and producing hybrid powertrains stretching back into the 90s, so we think it can manage.
But it’s also behind Toyota, which has been rolling out hybrid versions of just about every model line in production today.
Will we see other automakers like GM and Ford turn back to hybrids more?
Image via Honda