Name: Honda Motor Co. Ltd.  

                    Address: 2-1-1 Minami Aoyama, Minato-ku                     

City: Tokyo 107-8556, Japan    

CEO:  Takeo Fukui

Products: Motorcycles, Automobiles, Power Products

Year Founded: 1948

      Honda Motor Co., Ltd., is one of today’s leading manufacturers of automobiles and the largest manufacturer of motorcycles in the world. The company is recognized internationally for its expertise and leadership in developing and manufacturing a wide variety of products that incorporate Honda’s highly efficient internal combustion engine technologies, ranging from small general-purpose engines to specialty sports cars. Approximately 17.2 million Honda products were sold worldwide during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2004.

      Throughout all of its operations – from product development and manufacture to sales – Honda maintains a commitment to materialize its visions of “value creation”, “globalization” and “commitment to the future” with the aim of sharing the joy with customers worldwide, thus becoming a company that society wants to exist.

      Honda has long viewed itself as a mobility company determined to create new dreams for its customers and society through advanced technology and a high level of quality developed from the initiative of Honda associates throughout the world.

      Today, Honda is not only one of the world’s leading producers of motorcycles, automobiles and power equipment - but is leading the world in advancing the safety and environmental performance of products that, increasingly, are made in local markets throughout the world.

Global sales

      In 2004, Honda reached nearly 20 million customers worldwide for its three core business lines - motorcycles, automobiles and power equipment. Honda has been expanding its customer base through an ongoing commitment to innovation, a new level of outstanding quality for its products and services, and by efficiently networking together its growing global operations.

      Speed, flexibility and efficiency are key attributes of Honda’s global organization - strengths gained from the company’s 6-region global structure. Based upon Honda’s core philosophy of producing products close to the customer, Honda began a new global strategy focused on regional operations in the early 1990s - this now includes six regions including Japan, North America, South America, Europe/Middle East/Africa, Asia/Oceania and China.

      Expansion of Honda’s global production and R&D operations now includes more than 120 plants in 29 countries and R&D centers in each region. Management based in each region has the autonomy to make decisions based on local customer and community needs. But, with a global viewpoint, each region works in a complementary way - creating a true global network that supports the needs of customers worldwide.

Manufacturing flexibility

  In the pursuit of its Green Factory concept, which aims at more efficient and environment-friendly manufacturing operation for the next generation, Honda continues to innovate its production facilities worldwide to its flexible New Manufacturing System to reduce the time and cost required to bring new models to market. Honda’s major plants worldwide now have the capability to shift production models with higher flexibility based on market demand.

      Honda has a well-established history of leadership in the development and application of advanced safety technologies and the real world safety performance of all its products. Now, based on its commitment to offering Safety for Everyone through technology and innovation, Honda is improving safety for drivers and passengers of small and large vehicles as well as for riders of motorcycles and ATVs, and for pedestrians.

      Honda began introduction in 2003 of the all-new Advanced Compatibility Engineering (ACE) body structure, which enhances occupant protection while making them less aggressive toward other vehicles. The ACE body design will be applied to all new vehicle platforms worldwide over the next five to six years.

      Honda opened its $64 million state-of-the art indoor vehicle-to-vehicle crash safety testing facility in Tochigi, Japan in 2000. It has been playing a critical role in the development of many crash safety improvements. In 2003, Honda established another $30 million major crash safety research facility in the U.S. in Raymond, Ohio, including the world’s most sophisticated high-resolution crash barrier block and the world’s first pitching crash test simulator.

      Honda has also been a leader in airbag technologies such as the first upwardly deploying front passenger airbags and the first use of front side-airbags with occupant position detection sensors to reduce the risk of injuries caused by airbag deployment.

      In its efforts to improve safety for all road users, Honda is expanding the use of features designed to reduce injuries to pedestrians including specially designed hood structures, hood hinges, front frame construction and breakaway wiper pivots. These features are already in use in millions of Honda vehicles worldwide. Further, Honda has independently developed the POLAR II pedestrian dummy to lead this research effort. Honda has made it available to government and other organizations in the U.S., Japan and Europe in a cooperative effort to improve pedestrian protection.

Environmental challenge

      Honda has long been a pioneer in global auto industry in the development and application of leading edge environmental technologies that produce lower emissions and higher fuel efficiency. This commitment means developing products powered by the cleanest gasoline internal combustion engines, advanced gas-electric hybrid powertrains and alternative fuels like natural gas and new clean technologies such as fuel cells.

      Honda became the first automaker in the world to market a fuel cell vehicle certified by the U.S. EPA and the state of California - and first introduced the FCX fuel cell vehicle in 2001 simultaneously both in Japan and the U.S. Honda has also developed its own fuel cell stack and introduced it in the breakthrough FCX in 2004.

      Honda also continues to lead the industry in greenhouse gas reduction through achieving higher fuel economy. Honda introduced the Variable Cylinder Management (VCM) system to the Accord Hybrid, as well as to the Inspire in Japan and the Odyssey in North America. VCM improves fuel efficiency by shutting off three cylinders of a V-6 engine when the vehicle is cruising on the highway or in other situations where less power is required. The fall 2004 introduction of the Accord Hybrid also brought to three the number of gas-electric hybrid models offered by Honda (along with the Insight and Civic Hybrid).

      The environmental challenge does not apply only to automobiles. For 2-wheel vehicles, Honda produces only 4-stroke engine motorcycles for on-road use with improved environmental performance over 2-stroke engines.

      Honda has independently developed a turbofan jet engine and HondaJet - a concept small business jet. The company also formed a joint venture with General Electric Co. to bring the jet engine to market - to innovate the small jet market.

      Honda engineers created the world’s most advanced humanoid robot ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative MObility) to someday help people in need. ASIMO, can now run, walk forward and backward and climb stairs, and was created to function in real-world environments after almost 20 years of research and development.