General Motors could build electric cars for Honda, Acura

Common Motors will partially offset the price of growing electrical expertise by manufacturing battery-powered vehicles for Honda and Acura, in keeping with an unverified report. Ultium battery expertise is on the middle of the deal.

With out citing sources, trade commerce journal Automotive Information wrote that Honda has agreed to enlist rival-turned-partner Common Motors as one in every of its EV suppliers in the course of the first half of the 2020s. The manufacturing facility that at the moment builds Chevrolet’s Blazer and Equinox in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, will start manufacturing a Honda crossover in 2023, that means it doubtless will not arrive till the 2024 mannequin yr. On the opposite aspect of the border, the previous Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, will churn out an Acura crossover starting in 2024, about two years after it begins making the Cadillac Lyriq. Neither mannequin has been revealed, and Honda hasn’t commented on the report.

Insiders aware of the contents of the agency’s product pipeline instructed Automotive Information that each crossovers will likely be about as huge because the Lyriq (pictured), which will likely be shut in measurement to the 190-inch lengthy XT5. Energy for the 2 fashions will come from the Ultium battery expertise that Common Motors is growing for over a dozen electrical vehicles, together with the GMC Hummer and a Chevrolet-badged pickup we would uncover subsequent week throughout CES 2021.

Each EVs will likely be constructed by Common Motors, and so they’ll be powered by Common Motors-developed expertise (some will even obtain OnStar and the hands-free Tremendous Cruise driver help system), however all the pieces motorists see and contact will likely be Honda- or Acura-specific. We’re not anticipating that the tie-up will spawn a pair of blandly badge-engineered crossovers; stylists will doubtless give every one its personal design id inside and outside.

Honda had beforehand confirmed plans to construct at the least two electrical fashions on Common Motors bones, and it introduced that its American companion would additionally deal with manufacturing, however that is the primary time executives are throwing Acura onto the stage. What stays to be seen — assuming the report is correct — is whether or not the Lyriq will compete straight towards its Acura-branded sister mannequin, or if they will be positioned in numerous segments.

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