Honda Motor is closing in on a decision to build a new hybrid vehicle plant in Ohio, with a price tag of ¥300 to ¥400 billion — roughly $1.8 to $2.5 billion — according to Nikkei Asia. The plant would produce around 250,000 vehicles a year once production starts in 2030.
With the US alone making up close to half of Honda’s global sales last quarter, North America has become the company’s main profit engine while the rest of its business struggles. Rising gas prices are pushing more American buyers toward hybrids specifically, and Honda has leaned into the shift hard — it’s pulling its only pure-EV model, the Prologue SUV, from US showrooms by year’s end.
Honda had planned to spend as much as $15 billion (later scaled to roughly $11 billion) building out Canada’s first end-to-end EV supply chain in Alliston, before indefinitely suspending the project in May as weak demand forced a rethink of its electrification timeline.
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Read: Honda Suspends $15 Billion Ontario EV Plant Amid Weak Demand
Global CEO Toshihiro Mibe explained the logic in Tokyo at the time — money once set aside for EVs would instead flow into hybrid development, and this smaller but fast-moving Ohio project looks like that shift in action.
Honda posted its first full-year loss in company history for fiscal 2025, a roughly $2.5 to $2.7 billion hit tied directly to its EV overreach. Management is now targeting a return to record operating profit, above $8.9 billion, by the end of fiscal 2029 — a recovery plan that runs squarely through Ohio rather than Ontario.
