03-05-2013, 04:39 PM
Honda Motor Company, Ltd.
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INTRODUCTION
Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959,[3][4] as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year.[5] Honda surpassed Nissan in 2001 to become the second-largest Japanese automobile manufacturer.[6][7] As of August 2008, Honda surpassed Chrysler as the fourth largest automobile manufacturer in the United States.[8] Honda was the seventh largest automobile manufacturer in the world behind Toyota, General Motors, Volkswagen AG, Hyundai Motor Group, Ford, and Nissan in 2010.[citation needed]
Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer to release a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in 1986. Aside from their core automobile and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft and power generators, amongst others. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial intelligence/robotics research and released their ASIMO robot in 2000. They have also ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and he Honda HA-420 HondaJet, scheduled to be released in 2012. Honda invests about 5% of its revenues in research and development.[9]
History
From a young age, Honda's founder, Soichiro Honda (本田 宗一郎, Honda Sōichirō) (17 November 1906 – 5 August 1991) had an interest in automobiles. He worked as a mechanic at the Art Shokai garage, where he tuned cars and entered them in races. In 1937, with financing from an acquaintance, Kato Shichirō, Honda founded Tōkai Seiki (Eastern Sea Precision Machine Company) to make piston rings working out of the Art Shokai garage.[10] After initial failures, Tōkai Seiki won a contract to supply piston rings to Toyota, but lost the contract due to the poor quality of their products.[10] After attending engineering school, without graduating, and visiting factories around Japan to better understand Toyota's quality control processes, Honda was able, by 1941, to mass produce piston rings acceptable to Toyota, using an automated process that could employ even unskilled wartime laborers.[10][11]
Tōkai Seiki was placed under control of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (called the Ministry of Munitions after 1943) at the start of World War II, and Soichiro Honda was demoted from president to senior managing director after Toyota took a 40% stake in the company.[10] Honda also aided the war effort by assisting other companies in automating the production of military aircraft propellers.[10] The relationships Honda cultivated with personnel at Toyota, Nakajima Aircraft Company and the Imperial Japanese Navy would be instrumental in the postwar period.[10] A US B-29 bomber attack destroyed Tōkai Seiki's Yamashita plant in 1944, and the Itawa plant collapsed in the 1945 Mikawa earthquake, and Soichiro Honda sold the salvageable remains of the company to Toyota after the war for ¥450,000, and used the proceeds to found the Honda Technical Research Institute in October 1946.[10][12] With a staff of 12 men working in a 172-square-foot (16.0 m2) shack, they built and sold improvised motorized bicycles, using a supply of 500 two-stroke 50 cc Tohatsu war surplus radio generator engines.[10][11][13] When the engines ran out, Honda began building their own copy of the Tohatsu engine, and supplying these to customers to attach their bicycles.[10][13] This was the Honda Model A, nicknamed the Bata Bata for the sound the engine made.[10] The first complete motorcycle, with the both frame and engine made by Honda, was the 1949 Model D, the first Honda to go by the name Dream.[12] Honda Motor Company grew in a short time to become the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles by 1964.
Motorcycles
For a list of motorcycle products, see List of Honda motorcycles.
Honda is the largest motorcycle manufacturer in Japan and has been since it started production in 1955.[10] At its peak in 1982, Honda manufactured almost three million motorcycles annually. By 2006 this figure had reduced to around 550,000 but was still higher than its three domestic competitors.[10]
During the 1960s, when it was a small manufacturer, Honda broke out of the Japanese motorcycle market and began exporting to the U.S. Working with the advertising agency Grey Advertising, Honda created an innovative marketing campaign, using the slogan "You meet the nicest people on a Honda." In contrast to the prevailing negative stereotypes of motorcyclists in America as tough, antisocial rebels, this campaign suggested that Honda motorcycles were made for the everyman. The campaign was hugely successful; the ads ran for three years, and by the end of 1963 alone, Honda had sold 90,000 motorcycles.[11]
Taking Honda's story as an archetype of the smaller manufacturer entering a new market already occupied by highly dominant competitors, the story of their market entry, and their subsequent huge success in the U.S. and around the world, has been the subject of some academic controversy. Competing explanations have been advanced to explain Honda's strategy and the reasons for their success.[28]
The first of these explanations was put forward when, in 1975, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was commissioned by the UK government to write a report explaining why and how the British motorcycle industry had been out-competed by its Japanese competitors. The report concluded that the Japanese firms, including Honda, had sought a very high scale of production (they had made a large number of motorbikes) in order to benefit from economies of scale and learning curve effects. It blamed the decline of the British motorcycle industry on the failure of British managers to invest enough in their businesses to profit from economies of scale and scope.[29]
Flexible-fuel
Honda's Brazilian subsidiary launched flexible-fuel versions for the Honda Civic and Honda Fit in late 2006. As other Brazilian flex-fuel vehicles, these models run on any blend of hydrous ethanol (E100) and E20-E25 gasoline.[53][54] Initially, and in order to test the market preferences, the carmaker decided to produce a limited share of the vehicles with flex-fuel engines, 33 percent of the Civic production and 28 percent of the Fit models.[53][54] Also, the sale price for the flex-fuel version was higher than the respective gasoline versions, around US$1,000 premium for the Civic, and US$650 for the Fit, despite the fact that all other flex-fuel vehicles sold in Brazil had the same tag price as their gasoline versions.[54][55][56] In July 2009, Honda launched in the Brazilian market its third flexible-fuel car, the Honda City.[57]
During the last two months of 2006, both flex-fuel models sold 2,427 cars against 8,546 gasoline-powered automobiles,[58] jumping to 41,990 flex-fuel cars in 2007,[59] and reaching 93,361 in 2008.[60] Due to the success of the flex versions, by early 2009 a hundred percent of Honda's automobile production for the Brazilian market is now flexible-fuel, and only a small percentage of gasoline version is produced in Brazil for exports.[61]
In March 2009, Honda launched in the Brazilian market the first flex-fuel motorcycle in the world. Produced by its Brazilian subsidiary Moto Honda da Amazônia, the CG 150 Titan Mix is sold for around US$2,700.[62][63][64]
Hybrid electric
In late 1999, Honda launched the first commercial hybrid electric car sold in the U.S. market, the Honda Insight, just one month before the introduction of the Toyota Prius, and initially sold for US$20,000.[65][66] The first-generation Insight was produced from 2000 to 2006 and had a fuel economy of 70 miles per US gallon (3.4 L/100 km; 84 mpg-imp) for the EPA's highway rating, the most fuel-efficient mass-produced car at the time.[65][66] Total global sales for the Insight amounted to only around 18,000 vehicles.[66]
Honda introduced the second-generation Insight in its home nation of Japan in February 2009, and released it in other markets through 2009 and in the U.S. market in April 2009. At $19,800 as a five-door hatchback it will be the least expensive hybrid available in the U.S.[67] Honda expects to sell 200,000 of the vehicles each year, with half of those sales in the United States.[68]
Since 2002, Honda has also been selling the Honda Civic Hybrid (2003 model) in the U.S. market,.[65] It was followed by the Honda Accord Hybrid, offered in model years 2005 through 2007. Sales of the Honda CR-Z began in Japan in February 2010, becoming Honda's third hybrid electric car in the market.[69]