April 14, 2022: -Honda plans to invest nearly 5 trillion yen in electrification and software technologies in the coming ten years, with the Japanese automotive giant aiming to launch 30 EV models by the year 2030.

On Tuesday, the company said almost 3.5 trillion yen would go toward research and development expenses, with 1.5 trillion yen only for investments.

Honda has plans to target an EV production volume of more than 2 million units per year in 2030. In this timeframe, its total budget for R&D expenses would amount to nearly 8 trillion yen, or nearly $63.9 billion.

Honda said about the production that it would look to set up a “dedicated EV plant” in the Chinese cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan. The firm said it was “planning for a dedicated EV production line” in North America.

On the battery front in North America, the company is to “procure Ultium batteries from GM. Apart from GM; Honda is looking for the possibility of creating a joint venture company for battery production,” the firm added.

In the previous week, Honda and GM announced they would develop a series of affordable electric vehicles based on a new global platform.

With several significant economies looking to cut the number of diesel and gasoline vehicles on their roads in the years ahead, Honda and different carmakers are attempting to develop electrification strategies to keep up with recent regulations and remain competitive. 

In the previous month, Ford outlined plans to roll out three new passenger electric vehicles and four new commercial EVs in Europe by 2024. The company said its target was to sell more than 600,000 EVs per year by 2026.

BMW Group has said it hopes fully electric vehicles to represent at least 50% of its deliveries by 2030.

Such targets will put these companies in competition with Elon Musk’s Tesla, which produced more than 305,000 vehicles in the first quarter of 2022.

Another carmaker with plans for electrification is Mercedes-Benz, which has previously said it “will be ready to go all-electric at the end of the decade, where market conditions allow.”

On Monday, the firm held an ESG conference for analysts and investors. It said it wanted to cover over 70% of its energy needs with renewables by 2030.

It would achieve this, it said, by “rolling out solar and wind power” at its sites as well as entering into more power purchase agreements.