After incurring multi-billion losses due to its poorly planned electrification strategy, Honda is now facing the urgent need to prioritize hybrids over all-electric cars. Among other things, it means that its new industrial complex in Canada – which has already received $11 billion USD in investment – will not be constructed.
The Japanese automaker’s original plans for the Canadian factory involved making electric vehicles based on its 0 Series Sedan and SUV concepts (see video). Once at its nominal production capacity, the complex would be able to churn out 240,000 EVs to be sold in North America.
Now that those plans have been scrapped, the fate of the industrial site is up in the air. Some speculate that it might get repurposed for hybrid production later, but it’s hard to imagine right now, given how dire Honda’s financial troubles have become lately.
In case you missed it, the automaker reported a total net loss of $15.7 billion in Q1 2026, marking its first non-profitable quarter in many years. In the aftermath of the plunge, the company announced shelving the Honda 0 projects and discontinuing the gadget-packed Afeela 1 EV it co-designed with Sony.
In addition to those cars now being essentially dead in the water, the company has no funds left to produce new generations of its existing models. This means that for the next three years at best, Honda will be churning out the same cars without major updates.
The marque’s downfall coincided with China developing an automotive industry of its own, aggressively pricing its EVs and incentivizing buyers to prefer domestically made vehicles over the imports. This, too, has contributed to the disaster, analysts say.