• The Ohio EV Hub is part of Honda’s effort to produce EVs in the U.S.
• It alters current production lines to produce EVs and EV components.
• It includes the Anna Engine Plant, East Liberty and Marysville assembly plants, and a LG joint venture plant to produce batteries. 

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As a native Ohioan, it’s sometimes nice to go to a media event without having to travel hours away by plane or car. But in my case, a world-class revolution for carmaking is happening right in my own backyard.

A few days ago, Honda invited a few media folks to Central Ohio to take a closer look at its efforts to transform ICE car production facilities into factories flexible enough to produce EVs. The transition is such a big deal that Honda is calling this a “second rebirth,” on par with the post-World War II era when Honda started making cars. Perhaps that’s a little bit of marketing hyperbole on Honda’s part, but the brand’s plans feel very shrewd considering the state of limbo the whole U.S. EV market is in right now. 

Marysville, Ohio is an important location for Honda. It opened officially for business in early 1982, churning out Accord sedans for U.S. consumption—making Honda the first Japanese brand to make cars on American soil.

Photo by: Honda

Honda’s first U.S.-made vehicle, an Accord, in 1982.

In 1985, the brand opened an official R&D facility around the corner from the factory. Eventually, Honda expanded to other parts of Central Ohio with more manufacturing facilities in the nearby towns of East Liberty and Anna. Poetically, the Marysville auto plant still churns out Accord sedans, just like it did 40 years ago.

Now, Honda’s rejiggered a lot of its production capacity to support an EV build-out. Whereas other brands are gutting existing factories entirely or building new ones from the ground up, Honda wants to remain agile by adding a line or two to its existing production facilities to support EV production.

Photo by: InsideEVs

This wasn’t easy and involved a lot of logistics changes to make it all work together.

Take, for example, the process that mates a subframe or suspension assembly on an ICE car. These pieces are mounted on what are effectively pallets and then lifted up into the bottom of the vehicle in progress. Once completed, it moves to the next station. Honda’s engineering team reconfigured this action, allowing the same machinery to be able to install an EV’s integrated E-axle and suspension members. They made the pallets bigger to handle the girth of the electric motors and recalibrated the machinery to handle the extra weight of the components. Now, the manufacturing line can switch back and forth between EV and ICE cars on the same line, seamlessly.

In fact, the whole tour was Honda effectively showing off the updates to its manufacturing facilities. A lot of them are firsts for the brand, like its high-pressure die-casts and friction stir welding equipment meant to manufacture the battery cases. Or, the addition of CDC welding that Honda says will “enable welding EV bodies on the same line with ICE models, while enhancing quality on all vehicles.”

It’s just good practice. Practically everything that Honda’s upgraded at its Ohio plants is designed to be flexible enough to do more than one thing. Its new mega-casting equipment can make battery cases, but Tim Stroh, senior program manager of Production Engineering and Battery Case manager at the Anna Engine Plant, assured us that it could easily be swapped out to make engine blocks or whatever die-cast part that other Honda vehicles could utilize. It’s all about being flexible and meeting the needs of the market. 

Photo by: Honda

“Meeting the needs of the market” does feel like a bit of a slippery phrase. Some automakers use similar phrasing to justify slow-rolling their EV ambitions. Take that idea too far, and you find excuses never to do it.

Right now, Honda is adamant that demand for its hybrid cars is through the roof. In fact, a lot of Honda’s EV development also supports its hybrid line. We learned this year in Japan that Honda’s only making a handful of E-axle combinations. The least powerful E-axle will be shared with AWD versions of future hybrid models, so the company can adjust things to demand.

But when I asked exactly what the “market needs” are, Honda representatives were a lot less willing to say exactly how many cars or what percentage of vehicles it planned on being EVs. And given what we know about its future EVs, I can’t help but feel like this is more of a build-out for increased hybrid capacity with some EVs on the side—rather than full-blown EV development for now. 

Photo by: Honda

Honda 0 Series Saloon Driving

See, from what we’ve seen of Honda’s EV products, they’re going to be pricy, expensive things. The 0 Series Saloon is expected to be Honda’s flagship, priced somewhere around the Tesla Model S. The Acura RSX likely won’t be cheap, either. We don’t have pricing on Honda’s 0 Series SUV, but I can’t see it being a cheap as the Honda Prologue.

We know why this is. Building out high-quality EVs and their batteries is an expensive, capital-intensive affair. There’s a reason that every automaker trying to do this at scale, from Tesla to General Motors and beyond, mostly started out with the more expensive stuff and then let the technology “trickle down” to the more affordable options. 

Photo by: InsideEVs

I’m worried that Honda’s entering a bad market that doesn’t need another high-priced EV, with the wrong product that they’ll have no obligation to make. True, Honda does have plans to eventually make and sell lower-cost EVs, but initially, they’ll be starting off with flagship models. Yes, Honda can make EVs, but it demonstrated very confidently that it can just as easily do something else with the same hardware. 

Photo by: Acura

Acura Performance EV Concept

I asked Honda PR representative Jessica Fini about this, and she reiterated Honda’s commitment to being a carbon-neutral company by 2050. “We’ve invested billions in Ohio. We have a huge $4.4 billion joint venture just to make batteries. Do you really think we aren’t committed?” she said.

The upgrades at Honda’s Ohio plants may soon trickle down to Honda’s other manufacturing facilities. These other facilities may soon end up producing EVs on a similarly flexible line, one that can make ICE, hybrid, and EV.

Photo by: Honda

Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Currently, things are rocky for all types of manufacturing. President Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico—two huge manufacturing countries for all brands, including Honda—went into effect this weekend. EV tax credits may soon be on the chopping block as EV misinformation continues to spread.

For a brand like Honda, riding the pine and satiating hybrid demand until the market is ready is a smart idea. And Honda’s growth in somewhat mid-priced arenas with the Prologue is admirable, but sales can be challenging in more expensive segments. Just ask Lucid Mootrs, which has struggled to grow sales with one sedan in such a competitive high-end field. I question if Honda’s higher-end product line will be what the market is looking for, at least initially. 

We won’t have to wait too long to find out. Honda says the first models out of its Ohio EV hub will be on roads by 2026.

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