Honda announces new global platform, consolidation of trims

Honda has announced new plans for the future. Some of these include the development of a new scalable architecture, grouping of products across regions and reduction in the number of trims.

The Japanese carmaker has announced a new platform for upcoming cars. Called the Honda Architecture, it is claimed to improve parts sharing and increase the efficiency of development. The first model to be released based on this is expected to be launched in 2020. The company also claimed that more of their future products would be based on this platform. One of the by-products of this development is that lesser time will be spent on the development of mass production models. Honda claims that by 2025, they expect to see a reduction of 30% in the total man-hours needed, which would be utilized for research and development for the future.

The company also announced plans for better utilization of global production facilities. In 2018, excluding China, Honda had a capacity utilization of 90%. The company is aiming to run its plants at full capacity by 2020. The company also expects a 10% reduction of costs of global production by 2025. Honda also plans to reduce the total number of variants in each model and simplify the production at each of their plants.

In terms of electrification, Honda will focus on hybrid electric vehicles. These include plans to incorporate its 2-motor hybrid  system across a wider model line-up as well as development of a smaller hybrid system capable of use on smaller vehicles. The company expects a 25% reduction of cost in their hybrid system, dubbed as the i-MMD, by 2022.