Honda To Spend $11 Billion On Four EV Factories In North America

Jonathan M. Gitlin reports Ars Technica: Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and it's this last one that will benefit from the expansion, with four EV-related plants planned for Ontario. Honda says it has begun evaluating requirements for what it's calling an 'innovative and environmentally responsible' EV factory and a standalone EV battery plant in Alliston, Ontario, which is already home to Honda's two existing Canadian manufacturing facilities.

Additionally, the automaker wants to set up another two sites as joint ventures. One will be a plant that processes cathode active materials and their precursors -- the various elements like nickel and manganese that are combined with lithium in lithium-ion batteries -- set up in a partnership with POSCO Future M, a South Korean battery material and chemical company. (POSCO is already working with General Motors on another joint venture battery precursor material facility in Betancour, Quebec, that is supposed to become operational in 2026.) A second joint venture will be a partnership with Asahi Kasei, which will manufacture battery separators, the material that keeps the anode and cathode apart. The locations of these two joint ventures have not yet been announced.

Honda thinks it will be able to start making EVs in Ontario in 2028 and says the assembly plant will have the capacity to build 240,000 EVs per year. Meanwhile, the battery plant is planned to have an annual output of 36 GWh.

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