- Honda Ohio EV Hub will begin making EVs in late 2025 on 0 Sequence platform
- Manufacturing will embody Acura RSX, Honda 0 SUV, Honda 0 Saloon, and Afeela 1
- EVs, hybrids, and fuel fashions will likely be blended on single Marysville meeting line
- Processes launched for EVs will apply to ICE fashions, making them higher too
Over the previous a number of years, a curler coaster of EV provide and market demand, with an about-face of regulatory strikes, created a brand new sort of problem for full-line automakers—about how deeply and the way quickly to decide to devoted EV crops.
Honda continues to focus on 100% electrical automobile gross sales by 2040, and to have “zero environmental impression” by 2050. It’s beforehand projected 40% EV gross sales in North America by 2030. In the meantime hybrids add as much as 50% of U.S. Honda Accord gross sales, and in current months Honda has admitted that it’s arduous to foretell the trajectory of the place the combination will likely be on the best way to totally electrical.
To reconcile all this, it’s ready by committing to a brand new template for making each EVs and gasoline fashions, all on the identical manufacturing line. This sea change in the way it makes autos may hold its oldest U.S. meeting plant, its Marysville, Ohio, facility that opened in 1982, buzzing at capability, it doesn’t matter what the market presents.
As Honda confirmed final April, Marysville will actually get the automaker to the purpose of EV mass manufacturing in North America, with an enormous asterisk. It has the potential to make tons of of EVs per day, or many tons of of gasoline fashions—relying on demand.
Marysville is considered one of 4 services set to make up what Honda is asking its Ohio EV Hub—together with the Anna Engine Plant and East Liberty Auto Plant, all inside 50 miles of one another, and a joint-venture battery plant between Honda and LG Power answer in close by Jeffersonville, Ohio. Battery plant apart, Honda says it encompasses greater than a $1 billion funding within the three services, in redesigning the manufacturing course of round with the ability to make ICE, hybrid, and EV fashions all on the identical manufacturing line.
The funding within the Ohio services marks the worldwide debut of modifications in the best way it builds autos, with experience set to be shared throughout North America. And, in keeping with Honda, it’s aiming to set a world commonplace for Honda EV manufacturing.
Acura Efficiency EV idea – RSX
Honda 0 SUV prototype
Honda 0 Saloon prototype
Honda is ready to begin electrical automobile manufacturing in late 2025 on the Ohio EV Hub, starting with the Acura RSX EV. Honda-branded EVs based mostly on the Honda 0 SUV and Honda 0 Saloon prototypes will arrive quickly after, each in 2026.
That’s three fashions. There will even be a fourth mannequin set to ramp up across the identical time as these two Honda fashions: the Afeela 1, the Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) product of a three way partnership between Sony and Honda. SHM confirmed final month at CES in Las Vegas that deliveries of the $89,900 Afeela 1 will begin in mid-2026.
Afeela 1
Honda EVs, hybrids, and fuel fashions, on the identical line
At Marysville final week, Inexperienced Automotive Studies bought to see this nice change underway. Honda opted to mix its two meeting traces right into a single versatile meeting plant idea. The undertaking has been three years within the making behind the scenes, and Honda introduced the undertaking particular to the plant in March 2023.
The plant beforehand made the Acura Integra and TLX on one line, whereas the Accord was made on the opposite. With out interrupting the manufacturing move (and briefly transferring Accord manufacturing at one level), that concerned a collection of transitions, with the added house permitting a a lot wider line, with a brand new sub-assembly technique permitting for processes that EVs require and fuel fashions don’t—and vice versa.
Honda Accord meeting at Marysville
Mike Fischer, the chief for Honda’s North American EV undertaking, defined to GCR that this transformation of Ohio services might be the one most vital basis for Honda manufacturing, transferring ahead, as a result of it reveals how Honda can preserve not simply manufacturing flexibility however flexibility in the way it retains engineering and designing its autos. BEV and ICE autos can stay optimized for his or her respective strengths, and neither one will likely be hobbled for it on the manufacturing flooring.
Honda is protecting the general construct time precisely the identical after the road change, in keeping with Fischer, who led the manufacturing launch of the 2013 Accord, which required some modifications on the plant as a consequence of its in depth engineering modifications like a strut structure, CVT automated, and out there hybrid variations. The upcoming BEV fashions and their subassemblies will take “a little bit bit” extra construct time than the present Accord, he mentioned, including that there’s nonetheless alternative for optimization and it ought to be the identical or perhaps rather less.
In the meantime, it’s choosing up the tempo on that one line such that complete output from the plant may doubtlessly attain the earlier peak manufacturing of about 950 autos a day, or an annual capability of 220,000 from two traces.
It was no straightforward job. The upcoming EVs, which we previewed in October with a Honda 0 Sequence prototype drive, are set to have little or no in frequent with Honda’s gasoline autos, they usually’re going to be essentially completely different for a few years. Honda has no plans to merge physique buildings or automobile platforms amongst its gasoline and hybrid fashions.
Honda 0 Sequence battery instances
Honda seeding the long run in with its bread and butter
From the concept-car proportions to the next-gen Asimo OS interface, to all-new switchgear and shows, to the calibration wants of their Degree 3 automated driving system, and all the pieces beneath, it’s significantly arduous to search out commonalities. Whereas the Accord’s construction is primarily metal, the EVs will likely be constructed on an aluminum-focused physique construction, with the aluminum battery pack an integral piece. They had been designed with completely different priorities—in order to have brief overhangs and environment friendly cabins, with the power paths designed with no allowance for an engine in entrance, eliminating the necessity for prime cowl crossmembers and sending power paths to thick facet rails.
So it created a collection of sub-assembly traces that might deal with all of the variations in the best way an EV is assembled versus the best way a gasoline or hybrid automobile is assembled—and widened the best way for these sub-assemblies and for components and parts to get via.
Honda needed to improve its automobile carriers for heavier EVs, redesigned its people-movers alongside the road for higher ergonomics, and needed to devise robots that may apply thermal hole filler to the pack on the automobile line. It additionally needed to design a course of for battery pack meeting itself—together with the set up of cells from the close by Honda-LG battery plant—and for battery pack set up into the automobile (under).
For the physique buildings of the brand new EVs, Honda is switching to a CDC weld expertise—a world first, using pulses quite than a relentless present to assist make a lighter, stronger construction. Should you anticipate fireworks of sparks at welding stations, it feels uneventful.
Honda Accords going via inspection – Marysville OH
ICE and hybrid autos move via the EV battery pack space with out stopping, whereas EVs could move via a few of the steps for parts like exhaust and fuel-system set up with out stopping. Honda calls it “multi-platform flexibility.” And to maintain the speed of Accord Hybrid manufacturing operating robust, Honda additionally created a brand new space for hybrid battery meeting.
LG pouch cells fill the modules that get put in into the EVs’ battery packs on the Marysville line, as we noticed demonstrated, however Honda hasn’t but confirmed the battery capability. The pack is saved skinny by Honda’s uncommon and modern cooling technique—with water jackets machined into the pack case itself, permitting super-thin channels of coolant to flow into between that and a jacket cowl that matches over it.
Honda 0 Sequence battery case – quenching after casting
Honda 0 Sequence battery pack
Friction stir welding of Honda 0 Sequence battery case halves
Honda’s engine plant pivots to packs—and perhaps motors
In the meantime, the packs themselves are set to be made lower than an hour’s drive away, at Honda’s Anna Engine Plant, the place it’s taking up the same problem: manufacturing a few of the key parts for the 0 Sequence’ battery pack and powertrain with out interrupting its throughput for the vary of engines—together with Atkinson-cycle four-cylinders for the Accord Hybrid.
Honda has made about 30 million engines at Anna, and it has the manufacturing capability to make greater than 4,800 of them per day. Electrical motors for the EVs, engineered by Honda however constructed by captive provider Hitachi Astemo at current, are prone to be introduced into Anna ultimately, executives mentioned.
With six 31-foot-tall, 6,000-pound die-cast machines at Anna, Honda will “megacast” the battery-pack instances set to enter EVs at each Marysville and East Liberty. As Honda underscores, it’s bigger than something it’s ever die-cast.
Megacasting makes use of much less power than gigacasting, and the die-cast course of reduces scrap, eliminates the necessity for warmth treating, and permits Honda to shift the power used within the course of from fuel to electrical energy—lowering the CO2 footprint.
In Honda’s EVs, the pack is cut up right into a entrance and rear part, with a friction stir welding course of—strongly becoming a member of the 2 items with out melting—bonding the “butt joint” between the 2 sections.
Previous to machining, to ensure the instances, which function a part of the construction of the EVs, are dimensionally in verify—and, given the form, that it’s stayed flat—Honda has put to make use of a brand new “photogrammery” technique doubtlessly using greater than 100 cameras that quickly take a collection of pictures of the half, reconciling all of the recorded geometries.
Honda Accord Hybrid part meeting – Marysville, Ohio
Larger-quality Hondas throughout from revamp
As Fischer advised from an engineering standpoint, the meticulous take a look at how autos are being constructed, that went into this undertaking, meant greater than EVs on the identical line plus up to date machines and new robotics. It will profit future gasoline, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid autos in a large number of the way.
Tim Leopold, the BEV undertaking lead for the Marysville plant, mentioned that it’s introduced in additional of a “massive information” strategy to manufacturing beginning with the EV Hub remake, that extends to EVs and gasoline fashions alike. It introduced in a layered high quality strategy that’s so in depth it connects all the pieces from the torque suggestions of the instruments used to tighten bolts to issues just like the dimensional accuracy of the our bodies and the way parts match collectively.
“We are able to both hint or monitor it with information, and management it to the purpose of an interlock the place that exact unit received’t be capable of move downstream until we get a system saying, it’s okay, I’ve obtained good information,” defined Leopold. “We’re utilizing the EVs as a chance for change, however on the identical time that change goes to assist the ICE or hybrid counterpart, which is fairly thrilling.”
Honda 0 Sequence prototype and battery pack marriage – Ohio EV Hub
EV manufacturing begins late 2025
Leopold mentioned that Marysville is barely a few month away from making so-called “trial manufacturing” variations of the primary EVs, after which—with a number of evaluation alongside the best way—it’ll undergo a number of iterations over the following 10 to 11 months resulting in mass manufacturing.
This market-dependent, versatile, lift-all-boats strategy is a essential piece for remaining aggressive over the following 12 to fifteen years. Among the means there it might merely grow to be a query of when to retire the gasoline fashions. We aren’t there but.
Now it’s a matter of proving the thought out in real-world manufacturing—a undertaking that the workforce behind it feels very assured in taking across the globe.
“I can translate this, shift it to any of our manufacturing physique plant operations,” mentioned Fischer. “How one can do ICE, hybrid, and BEV normally, collectively…It created the proper storm for us to have the ability to do that at two services from the beginning, after which it’ll go wider.”
