Honda is on a roll this year, with the brand’s U.S. sales growth expected to outpace the rest of the auto industry in 2024. That includes a 10-percent increase in repeat business, as well as an influx of returning customers who exited the market during the pandemic. Interestingly, the brand attributes some of its success to its EV partnership with General Motors.
In a recent report from Automotive News, vice president of auto sales for American Honda, Lance Woelfer, outlined some of the Japanese brand’s successes so far in 2024. Woelfer said that bringing those customers who stayed on the sidelines during the pandemic back to market was a prime opportunity for growth for the automaker. Woelfer also highlighted “a breadth of incentives” on offer, while stating brand loyalty “is top of mind from a marketing standpoint.”
All in all, Honda is expected to generate 1.2 million to 1.3 million new vehicle sales in the U.S. in 2024, up from 1.16 million units sold in 2023. Meanwhile, the automaker’s premium brand, Acura, is expected to stay flat at 150,000 units.
Woelfer also touched on the company’s partnership with GM, with both the Honda and Acura brands set to benefit thanks to sales of the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX. Both all-electric models were created in collaboration with General Motors and are assembled at GM facilities, including the GM Spring Hill plant in Tennessee and the GM Ramos Arizpe plant in Mexico. Both vehicles also utilize GM’s Ultium-based electric vehicle technology. Although deliveries for the Prologue started later than expected, sales are still ramping up.
“We’re getting the vehicles we were expecting to the dealerships,” Woelfer said.
The praise for the partnership with GM could be seen as somewhat surprising, given the Japanese automaker elected to cancel its plans to co-develop affordable EV models with GM last year. Despite this, the ongoing collaboration on more-premium models like the Prologue and ZDX highlights the value both automakers find in collaborating efforts.
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Comments
Great. Now, what’s in it for GM? This is a repeat story where Honda uses GM for things to get what they want and then nothing really in it for GM. Sure, GM is certainly making money on the Honda/Acura units that Honda buys from GM, but GM is not in the business of building vehicles for others. They are an automobile manufacturer who is in business to build and sell GM products.
The article rightly points out that Honda pulled out of the deal to partner with GM to build lower priced EV’s. To me, that is the deal breaker. That was what GM was supposed to get back in return, but Honda killed that. And now? Honda/Acura is probably taking a few customers that would have purchased a GM EV. Sorry, but GM needs to stop being used and abused by Honda Corp.
GM is in the business to design, engineer, build and then ultimately sell automobiles. Whether they sell them to Chevrolet dealerships or Honda dealerships, they are still building and selling automobiles…
It helps their economies of scale and extends the reach of their platform to a different pool of buyers. There are, of course, people who cross-shop both automakers, but GM is in the win-win position here.
It’s pretty well known that Chevy and Honda buyers don’t cross shop each other a whole lot. You need economies of scale to get your unit economics right on a platform. Makes total sense that GM would do a private label thing to guarantee economies on Ultium with a partner that will not lead to much cannibalization. I would argue that GM is getting more out of this than Honda. What does Honda get? A dead end development that they have to market and sell with no future, and a logistics train for the next 20 years where they have to source parts, train techs, etc on a platform that will never be used again for them.
They’ll dump of it on GM, you probably today can take your Prologue to a Chevy dealer that is capable of handling blazer ev maintenance and get whatever you need done.
Is this really any different from the GM Toyota joint ventures decades ago ?
And pay less, too. A fellow tech had a Mazda that he had serviced at a Ford dealer because it cost less, and it used Ford parts. Another friend had a newer Mazda and its service information was printed by Ford.
I’m not sure why this is puzzling to you. This is not the first time GM built cars for others, or others (like Toyota or Suzuki) built cars for GM. We may not care for it much because if I get a Honda, I expect a Honda. Not a GM with a Honda badge. But these partnerships have been a thing since the 80s. Or did you forget Isuzu has built for Honda, Ford for Mazda, Kia for Ford (Ford Aspire), Chrysler for VW (VW Routan), and the many Mitsubishis for Chrysler under Eagle, Colt, or even Dodge? This is no different. In fact I expect more of this to occur as companies bum EV knowhow off each other.
Hell, GM even had the whole Geo sub-brand for joint venture cars. The Metro was essentially a re-badged Suzuki Swift, the Tracker a Suzuki Sidekick, the Prizm a Toyota Sprinter, the Spectrum an Isuzu Gemini and the Storm an Isuzu Impulse.
Not to mention Isuzu had an S-10 and 1500 series rebadged trucks.
If the partnership holds together, GM gets to more fully utilize it’s existing facilities and Honda gets all the EV units without all the risks of building a battery plant, retooling the largest car manufacturing (iCE) plant in the country or investing 10s of billions in the EV game.pretty big win for H.
Doesn’t GM loose 10K for each Ultium car sold?
They’re on track for positive variable profitability (i.e. per unit profits) this year.
Part of that was scaling up production enough to optimize it.
For GM, the EV deal allows the company to achieve production scale faster allowing the costs of building EVs to decrease. It’s the same reason VW is partnering up with Ford, Toyota is partnering up with Subaru, and the various Chinese EV manufacturers are with multiple foreign automakers.
Honda very likely pulled out for lack of total control over the engineering and manufacturing.
The fact that they jumped to partner up with Sony also makes me wonder if the highly protective Japanese regulators were weary of another western automaker getting too close to one of their own after the Nissan/ Renault debacle.
Toyota’s partnering with Subaru because Toyota bought General Motors’ stake in Fuji Heavy Industries when gm sold it pre bankruptcy. Therefore, Toyota essentially controls Subaru!
Toyota only owns a 20% stake. The largest single shareholder but hardly a controlling interest.
And it was boosted from something like < 15% to 20% as part of the mutual cross-pollination investing as part of the Solterra and bZ4X development (Subaru making it drive great and Toyota doing whatever you call that styling inside and out). I actually think Subaru did more to force Toyota into the EV world than anyone realizes (to leverage their gargantuan resources). But Toyota is doing the same thing with Mazda. Subaru built Camry’s in the US for a lot of years and now Mazda/Toyota are making the CX-50 and Corolla Cross in the US.
If you spend time with a Subaru and a Toyota you will find Toyota components in Subies. My best friend has a 2015 Impreza and its Starlink system is nearly identical in layout to my 2016 Rav4s Entune system. Just different color schemes. The signal and wiper stalks are the same too.
They toot success but now they pulled out of the partnership. So now they have remorse?
GM has a long history of these deals and generally they are a benefit.
Like the transmission they did for BMW was paid for by BMW but GM got full use 2 years later.
The Hydramatic 9T65 in my XT5 is a newer variation of a transmission that was jointly developed with Ford in 2017.
But wait where is the praise in that comment?
Not only does gm shoot itself in the foot with the Asians. Our government is and has been allowing these government subsidized nations take our manufacturing away from us for decades.
Shame on American leaders allowing our manufacturing base to be taken from us by foreign companies/goverments with an unfair playing field.
Motorweek had a review of this Honda Prologue and I find it ugly. The two tablet sized displays seem to be added on, unlike the integrated displays of the Cadillac Lyric which shares the power train and battery. The interior is as plain and spartan as a Tesla Model 3. It cost less, but it is just as cheaper in style and value. Go for the Lyric instead of this thing!
Now where is all the naysayers that talked so badly about this collaboration along with any positive GM news? you would think these people got paid to spew out the idiotic irrelevant nonsense on forums all over the internet.