Honda To Reduce Energy Use In Vehicle Manufacture

TULLAMARINE, AUSTRALIA – Aug 11, 2010: Responding to increasing demand for its motor vehicles, Honda Motor Co. will build two new plants in Japan.

President and CEO of Honda, Mr. Takanobu Ito, announced recently that Honda would immediately resume work on the Yorii plant in Saitama with a view to commencing production in 2013.

The plant, to be built on approximately 980,000 square metres of land, will employ 700 people and will be located just two kilometers from Honda’s Ogawa engine plant. Original plans to build the plant were delayed by the global financial crisis.

Mr. Ito said that innovative technologies introduced at the new Yorii plant would create a benchmark for other Honda manufacturing plants, aiming to reduce the energy use in vehicle production by more than 30 percent.

“The Yorii plant will start with small-volume production of environmentally-responsible vehicles which requires highly sophisticated manufacturing technologies to mature its advanced technologies,” Mr. Ito said. “Yorii will evolve such manufacturing technologies that are keys to the next-generation of Honda, to other Honda operations around the world to achieve the global growth of Honda.”

Honda also aims to introduce new technologies at its Suzuka factory, which will add to the company’s efforts to reduce the bodyweight and cost of Honda’s next generation models.

Honda will begin production of mini-vehicles at the Suzuka factory in 2012. Mr Ito said that the technologies employed at Suzuka would also transcend to other Honda operations around the world.