Honda and Electric

It is 9:47 AM, an hour at which I have abandoned my morning but not yet earned my afternoon, and I am standing in my kitchen holding a mug that says nothing on it because I have reached the age where I no longer want my dishware to have opinions. The rain is doing its part. The cat is doing its part. I am reading the news on a phone I am holding too close to my face, the way my grandmother used to hold envelopes she didn't want to open.

Honda, it turns out, has lost money. Not a small amount. 423.9 billion yen, which converts to $2.7 billion, which is its first-ever annual loss in the history of the company that makes the Accord and the Super Cub motorcycle, the latter being a thing I have never ridden but feel oddly protective of. The losses, the article says, come from Honda's electric-vehicle plans, which it now estimates will cost roughly 2.5 trillion yen, or $16 billion, mostly across the fiscal year just ended and the one currently underway. They blame, in part, the rollback of U.S. environmental incentives, and Trump's tariffs on imported autos and parts, lowered to 15% from 25%, which apparently still stings.

There is something about a giant company admitting it was too ambitious too fast that makes me want to sit down, even though I am already sitting down. Honda abandoned EV models, including ones it had been developing in a joint venture with Sony, which I had forgotten existed, and which I now mourn the way you mourn a restaurant you never went to that closes anyway. The CEO, Toshihiro Mibe, was asked by a reporter, in the polite Japanese way that is not actually polite, whether he intended to resign. He said he wanted to carry out the revival plan first. He said, "We will get back on a growth track." I read this sentence three times. It is the corporate equivalent of telling your therapist you are fine.

What gets me is the motorcycles. Honda sold 22.1 million of them, up from 20 million, dominating markets like India, while its car sales dropped from 3.7 million to 3.4 million. So the thing keeping Honda afloat, the thing patching the $2.7 billion hole, is essentially the Super Cub and its descendants, small loud machines puttering through cities I have never been to, while in conference rooms in Tokyo and Detroit and somewhere outside Columbus, very serious men plan the electric future that the actual present has politely declined to fund.

Honda forecasts a return to profit next year, 260 billion yen, $1.7 billion, which is the financial equivalent of saying you'll start running again in January. I finish my coffee. It has gone cold in the way coffee goes cold, which is to say while you weren't looking. Outside, somewhere, a motorcycle.

Source: The Seattle Times — Business