Honda outlines its motorcycle strategy
By Ben Purvis
Honda believes that the global motorcycle market is set to grow from 50 million to 60 million sales per year by 2030 and has set out a strategy that it hopes will see the brand's share of that market expand to 50% of the total.
At the moment, Honda sells 20.2 million bikes per year globally, accounting for 40% of the overall market, with Asia responsible for the majority of those sales - 17.17 million, or 85% - while the high-end markets of Japan, Europe and the USA make up a mere 6% of the company's bike sales at 1.2 million units. The long-term ambition of expanding to a 50% share of a larger, 60-million bike market would mean Honda needs to increase its global sales to 30 million bikes per year.
Honda believes that the main growth area will be an area the company calls the 'Global South' - encompassing Southwest Asia, which includes India, plus Indonesia, the Philippines, and Central and South American countries. The projected 60 million-strong 2030 market includes electric bikes as well as conventional ones, with battery-powered machines becoming increasingly important.
Specifically looking at Europe, Honda's plan is to expand its system of using common platforms as the basis of multiple models. It's already the master of that art, with various common-platform model ranges in its lineup - for example, the Africa Twin platform, which also forms the basis of the NT1100 (and in Japan the Hawk 1100) - and more recently the CB750 platform used underneath the CB750 Hornet and XL750 Transalp. It's a system that allows a broad model range while minimising R&D and production expense, vital given the relatively small proportion of sales that the European bikes account for in Honda's global picture.
The new V3 engine complete with an electric supercharger that was shown inside a trellis-style frame at EICMA last year previewed another common platform that's set to underpin multiple models in the future, according to Honda.
Electric bikes is another area that the company is focusing on despite disappointing - and falling - sales of electric bikes in European markets. Honda's plan is to have 30 electric bikes in its global lineup by 2030, accounting for 4 million sales. Honda's electric plan revolves around two separate pillars: one is the concept of swappable, standardised batteries, used in small, low-performance bikes and scooters - Honda already has battery-swap networks established in Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and India - the other is the more European-focused idea of larger electric bikes with fixed batteries.
To ensure the success of electric bikes, Honda wants to bring costs down so the total cost of owning an electric bike, over a period of three years, is equivalent to the same period of owning an ICE bike. That indicates initial purchase costs will remain higher, but the overall savings from cheaper energy will be used to bring the ownership costs level with conventional machines.
As part of its efforts to make electric vehicles - both two and four-wheeled - more appealing, Honda began operation of its pilot plant manufacturing all-solid-state batteries in January. The factory isn't making batteries for production vehicles yet, but it's verifying the production methods at full scale, so once perfected and proven it's possible to rapidly expand. All-solid-state batteries are a potential game-changer, replacing the liquid electrolyte used in existing li-ion cells with a solid one, they allow batteries to be smaller and more energy-dense. Because there's no flammable liquid electrolyte inside - it's replaced with a solid one, allowing the electrodes to be closer together without needing a separator layer - they can be run hotter than existing designs, in turn making them faster-charging.
Solid state batteries can also be made without using as many rare materials as existing li-ion designs, and thanks to the reduced fire risk, they don't need the same heavy, bulky protective cases. For electric bikes, where the size, weight and cost of the battery make up a larger proportion of the whole vehicle than in electric cars, the benefits of cheaper, smaller, lighter and more powerful batteries will be even more keenly felt.
Honda expects solid-state batteries to start appearing in production vehicles in the latter part of this decade.
As a final note, Honda expects to hit a key milestone of cumulative global motorcycle production this year, with the 500,000,000th bike to wear the Honda badge since 1948 rolling off one of its production lines at some point in 2025.
