Sound familiar? No surprise why the Clarity exists.

VP Dave's claims regarding Honda's EV cred ring hollow as the company announces its first North-American EV will be built by GM and will be powered by GM batteries.

 

I believe that quote came from an article in which they were announcing that they would produce their own EV's after the GM Honda and Acura models.

 

I don’t see it that way.

Batteries are expensive. PERIOD.

Just as Ford teamed with Toyota decades ago to gain hybrid tech with Toyota getting some diesel tech out of the partnership (hehe, Ford came out WAY ahead in that deal methinks.....), Honda and GM have been working together for many years in the fuel-cell field. Even Tesla badly needed Panasonic’s help in the beginning. Musk said building prototypes is easy but production was “hell” and 100’s of times more difficult. Well it’s not exactly rocket science (he should know) but it’s pretty darn close nowadays and profit margins can be razor thin with no error for getting new, expensive tech to market.

I don’t see partnerships, as a whole, as a bad sign of things to come. In this case, Honda could learn how to do things or NOT how to do things.

 

I agree that partnerships make sense and I know Honda and GM have been partnering for years, but it seemed to me like Dave Gardner was saying that despite the fact that Honda will be partnering with GM, who will build EVs to Honda's specs using GM components and factories, Honda was still planning to go the non-partner route and build all-Honda EVs when the company gets around to it. The timing made it seem like he was being defensive about partnering with GM by talking about future plans that do not involve GM.