Honda CEO sees potential in electric car market - Reuters

I've owned two Hondas, one car, one motorcycle, and they were both great. But Honda seems to be led by Ghosn's alter ego. Devoid of coherent purpose, Honda seems to flail at the future. Still, they do have excellent engineering and I may attend the LA Auto show this year just to see the other car makers' varied responses to Nissan's EV push.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6A11QH20101102

"We can't keep shooting down their potential, and we can't say there's no business case for it."

Under Takeo Fukui and other former CEOs, Honda had been a strong proponent of hydrogen fuel-cell cars as the best zero-emission alternative to today's combustion engine cars because they have a similar driving range of 500-600 km (310-375 miles), unlike battery EVs' limited reach.

Nissan Motor Co's Leaf, which will become the world's first mass-volume electric car when it goes on sale next month, can only be driven for 160 km (100 miles) on a full charge since packing more batteries to extend the range would make the car prohibitively expensive.

"The thing is, not everybody needs to drive 500 km a day," Ito said, echoing the argument made by Nissan and its partner, Renault SA, to sell battery EVs in big volumes around the world.

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I am a Honda fan but they have an almost GM attitude towards electricity. My personal theory is that the core value at Honda is Engineering "Internal Combustion Engine Technology". Plain and simple. ICE Engineering is what they do! It is their tradition! It is why they race and do very well at it I might add. Valentino Rossi (MotoGP) left Honda at their racing peak because he claimed they were TOO obsessed with their engineering technology! Honda literally did not care about him as a rider and just considered him a showman for their technology. He switched to Yamaha and has basically beaten the tar out Honda ever since. Honda's lack of interest in the "human factor" could go very far in explaining their lack of interest in EV's. As in, EV's are too "people/environment/economy oriented" to interest Honda. When EV's start racing or (gasp) BEAT an ICE opponent, Honda will jump in with both feet just for the technological challenge of it! I think Honda needs a racing target before they will care about EV technology. Just my $.02.

An electric motorcycle has already beaten the fastest ICE motorcycle, google "killacyle"
most EVs can beat any ICE off the line as well, unlimited torque at zero RPM...

mitch672 said:

An electric motorcycle has already beaten the fastest ICE motorcycle, google "killacyle"
most EVs can beat any ICE off the line as well, unlimited torque at zero RPM...

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Maybe more accurately, full torque at zero RPM, not unlimited torque.