Seiji Kuraishi: Honda Sales in China Expected Over 750 Thousand

“Honda sales in Oct reaches 75,150, which is triple than last year. Based on the situation, we expect it is possible to achieve 750 thousand sales this year to hit record high.” Seiji Kuraishi, director of R&D of Honda told Tencent Auto reporter at Guangzhou Auto Exhibition on 21 Nov.

Seiji Kuraishi said that earthquake, flood and China-Japan relationship influenced Honda sales in China for a while, but in recent 2 year, to make Chinese customer understand Honda more, Hondainitiates a FUNTEC slogan that “all products of Honda will be geared with FUNTEC technology. It has introduced three cars geared with FUNTEC from June this year: Crider, Jade and Accord 9th. All of them have a good market performance.”

Seiji Kuraishi said that in the next 2 years, Honda will introduce 9 new cars. Besides, starting from next year, Honda will introduce some total new cars and successors geared with FUNTEC.

New products introduction has stricter requirement for local suppliers. Honda needs to enlarge its local suppler percentage to efficient suppliers function. “We want to strength localization to transmit more projects to local, and make decision faster.” Seiji Kuraishi said.

On 5 Nov, Honda found its Honda Technology Research (China) Co. Ltd in Guangzhou. As mentioned about its function, Seiji Kuraishi said that “”the company is based on Honda Guangzhou branch, and owns research, purchase, manufacture support, IT support and general productsarrangement functions.”

Same with most joint ventures, Honda new car development module is formed by Honda and Chinese local company, but Japanese take predominance. Take Jade for an example, the car has launched market recently, most of its researchers from Japanese.

Seiji Kuraishi told Tencent Auto that “if we hand research task to our Chinese partner at first moment, it is too hard for them. Therefore, we’d better cooperate with each other at the beginning, and cultivates joint venture research ability. It is the ideal condition.”

Heung Takahiro, executive director of Honda Motor Co. said plus that “we will cooperate with both companies as well. And we will develop more products like Jade.”

Seiji Kuraishi said that compared with Volkswagen, which Honda takes it as its opponent in China, we still have distance. Products line shortage is one reason that Honda sales has not reach Volkswagen’s.

“For such a big market like China, Honda needs to rethink about its product shortage problem. However, Volkswagen takes effort on this area. Many products acutely share with the same platform, just has some little change in details. It is the place Honda needs to learn.”

Although Honda in China has not taken advance, Chinese auto market still has huge potential. “In the future, GAC Honda and Dongfeng Honda will share one platform and develop their own products to add into product line.”