by Daniel Leussink

Tokyo (Reuters) – Honda Motor announced Tuesday to reduce its investments in electric vehicles due to the slowdown in demand, the automaker declaring focusing on the more popular hybrids with a series of revised models.

Honda Motor, the second largest car manufacturer in Japan after Toyota Motor, also abandoned its objective aimed at bringing the share of electric vehicles (VE) to 30% of its total sales by 2030.

“It is really difficult to read the market, but for the moment, we believe that the VEs will represent about a fifth of our sales by then,” said group general, Toshihiro Mibe, at a press conference.

Honda has reduced its planned investment in electrification and software by 30% by 20230 to bring it to 7,000 billion yen (43.06 billion euros).

Honda is now one of the car manufacturers who have reduced their investments in the EVs, in particular due to the evolution of demand for hybrid vehicles and the relaxation of rules in terms of carbon emissions and sales objectives.

President Donald Trump, for example, revoked a decree of the administration of his predecessor aimed at ensuring that all the new vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 are electric.

The European Union (EU) plans to extend the deadlines granted to car manufacturers to achieve new CO2 emissions targets.

Honda aims to sell between 2.2 to 2.3 million hybrid vehicles by 2030, a considerable leap compared to the 868,000 vehicles sold last year.

The automaker, however, said that he still provided that battery and fuel cell vehicles represent all of his new car sales by 2040.

Honda plans to launch 13 new generation hybrid models worldwide in the four years from 2027.

(Written by Daniel Leussink; Etienne Breban; edited by Augustin Turpin)

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