Honda & GM Promise Affordable EVs, Tesla Bumps Model 3 Price In Germany
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This week, General Motors and Honda announced a new partnership to jointly develop affordable electric vehicles — emphasis on affordable. There are plenty of Rivian and Hummer electric vehicles available, at prices north of $60,000, but precious few EVs that people on a budget can afford. Honda and GM intend to fix that. In fact, Chevrolet says its new Equinox EV due out next year will have a starting price around $30,000.
The partnership will focus on the General Motors Ultium EV platform and will leverage both automakers’ robust manufacturing capabilities. Some may also utilize Honda’s e-Architecture platform used in the Honda e. The first vehicles from the partnership are expected in showrooms in time for the 2027 model year.
The Honda/GM Partnership
“We plan to leverage these strengths to achieve a dramatic expansion in the sales of affordable, compact electric vehicles,” says Rich Schostek, a GM executive vice president. “The foundation of this collaboration is the strength of the relationship between GM and Honda, and the comfort level we have in joint development projects based on successful collaboration in other advanced technology projects focused on electric and autonomous vehicles.” GM is planning to build electric SUVs for Honda at the Spring Hill, Tennessee factory alongside the new Cadillac Lyriq.
“GM and Honda will share our best technology, design, and manufacturing strategies to deliver affordable and desirable EVs on a global scale, including our key markets in North America, South America and China,” said Mary Barra, GM CEO, in a statement. “This is a key step to deliver on our commitment to achieve carbon neutrality in our global products and operations by 2040 and eliminate tailpipe emissions from light duty vehicles in the U.S. by 2035. By working together, we’ll put people all over the world into EVs faster than either company could achieve on its own.”
This partnership is about scale, TechCrunch reports. Together, Honda and GM have among the most robust manufacturing and distribution processes available and, depending on the exact terms, should be able to leverage these strengths to quickly and efficiently flood the market with EVs.
Tesla Bumps The Price Of Model 3 In Germany
People can’t get enough Teslas, apparently. No matter how much the company raises prices on its models, the demand keeps driving new and higher sales totals. Over the past weekend, Tesla increased the price of the Model 3 for its German customers by a whopping €7,000. The bump makes the car ineligible for the largest German EV incentives, so not only do German customers pay a higher sticker price, they also get €1,500 less in incentives. That makes the net effective price of a new Model 3 in German €8,500 higher than it was last week, according to Teslarati. That’s quite a jump.
Far be it from us to question the Great And Powerful Musk, but while the company says the increase is due to higher prices for nickel and other raw materials, some are beginning to question whether Tesla, which holds the whip hand in the EV marketplace at the moment, is simply price gouging. We leave that up to you to decide for yourselves.
The Takeaway
Every observer of the electric car scene is wondering when the low price cars from Chinese manufacturers will arrive in America. One thing holding them back is the 25% import duty on cars from China, which will probably force Chinese companies to build factories in the US first, much as American and European companies have built factories in China. Then there is the lingering love/hate relationship between China and the US, which will directly impact any decision to build factories in America. You can bet your bottom dollar there will be enormous pressure to exclude Chinese vehicles that come to America from being eligible for the federal EV tax credit.
No matter how it happens or who makes them, affordable EVs are in critically short supply at the moment and that has created a window of opportunity for GM and Honda. 2027 does seem like a long time to wait for the fruits of the new partnership to materialize, however. GM is waxing ecstatic about being 100% emissions-free by 2040, a goal that Honda also shares. That is at least a decade too late, based on the IPCC 6 Phase 3 report released this week.
Tesla is maximizing profits. While it has every right to do so, it seems to fly in the face of Musk’s stated goal of bringing electric transportation to the world. Even he cannot prevent the ice caps from melting, sea levels from rising, and droughts from getting worse. If profits are to rule the future of Tesla, than Musk has reneged on his promise to all of us and become just another entrepreneur who lost his soul to greed, like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Peter Thiel.
They are all planning to blast off together to Mars or Alpha Centauri, leaving us mere mortals behind to survive on a ruined planet — if we can. All we can say to Elon is, we expected better from you.
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