Key Takeaways
- The Honda-Dongfeng partnership introduces a new sedan, the Lingxi L, with a 322-mile range.
- The sedan boasts a simple design resembling the Kia K4.
- Honda plans to invest $65 billion in EVs by 2030, aiming to produce over 2 million EVs annually.
The Honda-Dongfeng partnership has just produced a new electric vehicle for the Chinese market that boasts impressive specs with a compact design. Most notably, the brand claims this sedan will be able to travel 322 miles (CLTC) on a single charge, which would come out to around 240 miles of range on the EPA cycle.
Honda
Japanese automaker Honda rose from the ashes of WWII and set about its business as a manufacturer of motorcycles initially, only launching its first car, the T360 kei truck, in 1963. Founder Soichiro Honda targeted the American market as the most important nut to crack, leading to generations of iconic nameplates like the Civic and Accord being among America’s best-selling passenger cars. Today, Hondas are renowned for their safety, practicality, and reliability, with a sprinkling of performance from models like the Civic Type R.
- Founded
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24 September 1948
- Founder
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Soichiro Honda
- Headquarters
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Hamamatsu, Japan
- Owned By
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Publicly Traded
- Current CEO
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Toshihiro Mibe
The Honda Dongfeng partnership goes back to 2003, with the two releasing plenty of models strictly for the Chinese public. According to CarNewsChina, this new sedan, called the L, is the first EV under the joint venture’s Lingxi brand, which helps the two companies make good on their promise to have 50% of their models be EVs by 2025, and to no longer release combustion models after 2027.
Looks And Performance
The sedan doesn’t do anything too crazy with the design, offering a dual-tone paint scheme with a classic sedan silhouette. The overall shape reminds us of the new Kia K4. The lighting on the front is interesting because it features a long vertical LED across the hood and horizontal LED lights on the grille that comes to a point at the brand’s logo on the front as a standout feature.
The sides feature a lot of angles but not much of note besides the camera side view mirrors. In the rear, the lighting elements come together on either side similar to the Subaru WRX, but a light strip connects them which is again reminiscent of the K4.
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Performance comes from a small 59.22 kWh battery pack with a single 215-horsepower electric motor up front that can achieve speeds up to 99 mph. Performance like this is similar to the recently unveiled Kia EV3, but that model boasts much better range and a slightly higher top speed.
Pictures of the interior show a simple design with screens that stretch across the length of the dashboard, similar to the new Lincoln Navigator. If you’re interested in a vehicle that you can unplug in, this is certainly not the one.
Honda’s EV Plans
The company has been announcing many new electric products for China in the past couple of years, such as the e:N Series. We wouldn’t mind many of them coming stateside if the company could find a way around the new tariffs.
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The EV can also run 746 miles on a single charge with a range extender.
Honda recently announced it will invest $65 billion in electric vehicles by 2030, which is double the commitment it made a couple of years ago, because it sees the EV industry growing substantially by the end of the decade. By then, the company hopes to be producing more than 2 million EVs a year by strengthening supply chains and dropping the cost of battery production.
In the near term, the company hopes to be producing EVs in the US by next year to add to the Mexico-produced Prologue. It’s possible its joint partnership with Sony could see the Afeela brand produced in the US, making for Sony’s first foray into the automotive industry.
Source: CarNewsChina
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