Honda Says Making Cheap Electric Vehicles is Too Hard, Ends Deal With GM
"After extensive studies and analysis, we have come to a mutual decision to discontinue the program. Each company remains committed to affordability in the EV market," Honda and GM said in a joint statement. "After studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business, so at the moment we are ending development of an affordable EV," said Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe in an interview with Bloomberg. "GM and Honda will search for a solution separately. This project itself has been canceled," Mibe said.
The now-canceled platform was supposed to use GM's Ultium batteries. GM debuted Ultium in 2020 as its third-generation lithium-ion cell, developed together with LG Chem. At the time, GM CEO Mary Barra said that Ultium cells would drop below the $100/kWh barrier "early in the platform's life." In 2022, the first Ultium-based EVs went into production -- the GMC Hummer EV, the Cadillac Lyriq, and the BrightDrop Zevo 600. Ultium cells were supposedly ready for mass production, but GM and LG Chem are struggling to make that a reality. In July, GM had to idle BrightDrop's production line in Canada due to a shortage of battery cells, and Kelly Blue Book's sales data for the first three quarters of 2023 show that just 6,920 Ultium-based EVs (which include the Chevrolet Blazer and Silverado EV, as well as the Hummer, Lyriq, and BrightDrop van) were delivered to customers.
