
Honda risks becoming a third wheel in India with its new electric scooter strategy
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. For the world’s carmakers, the inexorable rise of Chinese electric vehicle-maker BYD and its local rivals in recent years has been a brutal lesson in disruptive innovation. China, a market that was once core to their global growth plans, has become a wasteland for their petrol-powered lineups as electric vehicles (EVs) grew from 6.2% of sales in 2020 to 45% last year.
The foreign brands that dominated the Chinese market in the 2010s have been devastated. Sales by Ford and Nissan—both top-10 brands in 2017—have since fallen by 81% and 45% respectively. Ford dropped behind barely-known local electric marques such as Zeekr and Deepal.
General Motors is facing extinction, with Buick down 66% over the period and Chevrolet slumping 92%, while Honda’s sales have dropped 40%. BYD, the 21st-biggest carmaker in 2017, last year sold more cars in China than the 10 major Japanese brands put together. Get ready to see the same pattern play out on two wheels.
Right now, scooters and motorbikes are a market where Japanese brands are looking up. With rising incomes across India and Southeast Asia, the sector is booming: McKinsey reckons sales will grow at 8.7% a year through 2029, compared to about 1% this decade for passenger cars. Honda already has 40% of this global market and reckons it can grow it to 50% as sales rise to 60 million bikes by 2030.
Its two-wheeler business is seen as the jewel of the on-again, off-again merger between Honda and Nissan. Honda’s eccentric and timid electrification plans, however, are confounding. The most important plank of Honda’s shift was announced in India late last year with the rollout of the Activa-e: a battery-powered version of its top-selling local bike.
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