Honda ditches GM, goes solo on next-gen hydrogen fuel cell amid shifting alliances

TOKYO – Honda Motor Co. is ditching longtime partner General Motors to go solo in developing and manufacturing its own next-generation hydrogen fuel cell system, the latest sign of unwinding ties between the Japanese and American carmakers amid shifting auto alliances.

Honda announced its upcoming fuel cell system Feb. 19 at the International Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Expo in Tokyo. The setup achieves double the durability — half the cost and triple the volumetric power density of the current system developed with GM and produced in the U.S.

Honda said the greater power density, a measure of the amount of energy churned out per unit volume, allows the system to be more compact so it can fit flexibly into different layouts.

Overall power output is rated at 150 kW, up from 78 kW in the GM unit, Honda said.

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Today’s fuel cell system is manufactured in Brownstown Township, Mich., at a GM-Honda joint venture. That operation began in January 2024. The partners targeted output of some 2,000 systems annually for Honda. The system is used in the CR-V e:FCEV, a hydrogen-powered version of the popular crosssover made at Honda’s Performance Manufacturing Center in Marysville, Ohio.

But in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2028, Honda says it will begin manufacturing the new, in-house fuel cell system in Japan at a new plant being built in Moka, a city just north of Tokyo in Tochigi prefecture. The facility will be on the site of an old, unused powertrain factory.

It will have capacity for 30,000 fuel cell systems a year, Honda said.

“The fuel cells that are being jointly developed with GM for use in stationary power sources and CR-Vs will continue to be manufactured in a joint venture with GM,” spokesman Tsubasa Yoshioka said. “As for whether we will provide GM with the technology for the next-generation fuel cell announced this time, we have no plans to do so at this time.”

A person familiar with GM’s planning confirmed that the two companies have no plans to collaborate on a next-generation system but said that the sides are still talking about technological collaborations and could eventually circle back on fuel cells in the long run.

Honda looks to Nissan, as GM looks to Hyundai

Honda’s go-it-alone move comes as Honda and GM navigate shifting auto alliances while international carmakers scramble to find friends to help shoulder the huge investments in next-generation powertrain technologies and build massive scale to spread out the costs.

Honda announced broad collaboration last year with Japanese rivals Nissan Motor Co. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. The three said they would work together on software-defined vehicles and electrification, including motors, inverters and batteries, as well as joint vehicle supply.

In December, the three Japanese players announced they would merge into a new company that would be the world’s No. 3 auto group with combined global volume of 8 million vehicles.

But Nissan and Honda terminated those talks this month after butting heads about control. They now plan to revert to their earlier focus on strategic products and technologies.

For its part, GM said in September it was forming a similarly broad-based partnership with South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. Hydrogen technologies are one of several technology areas that GM and Hyundai referenced as having big potential for collaboration.

Under the GM-Hyundai tie-up, Hyundai agreed to supply GM with electric commercial vehicles. They are also expected to cooperate on parts procurement.

The new partners could also announce cooperation in production as early as March, Business Korea reported Feb. 20. That arrangement will allow the companies to share global factories and give Hyundai sites inside the U.S.-based GM factories to assemble knockdown kits of its cars to help mitigate the impact of any tariffs, the news site said.

At the same time, it would enable GM to reenter the European or Indian markets by leveraging Hyundai’s plants, it said.

Honda and GM have long history of collaboration

The tie-up between GM and Hyundai mirrors an earlier one GM had with Honda.

In 2020, GM and Honda entered a memo of understanding to form a North American automotive alliance envisioned as someday supplying a range of vehicles sold under both brands. It also targeted further cooperation in purchasing, R&D and platforms.

That agreement built on an earlier partnership in which GM helped develop two new electric vehicles for Honda that are powered by GM’s upcoming Ultium batteries.

The companies still team on those vehicles: The Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, two all-electric crossovers that ride on GM’s EV platform and are produced at a GM plant in Mexico.

Since then, however, GM and Honda have somewhat drifted apart.

In 2023, Honda and GM scuttled plans to work on a series of affordable, next-generation EVs. And there are currently no plans to follow the Prologue or ZDX with a second generation in cooperation with GM. Instead, Honda is working on its own series of EVs for the late 2020s.

Meanwhile, Honda has ended its involvement with Cruise, following GM’s decision last year to fold the self-driving taxi subsidiary into the automaker’s in-house autonomous driving unit.

Honda had a small minority stake in Cruise and planned to introduce a self-driving taxi service based on the Cruise Origin people-mover to central Tokyo early next year.

Honda canceled that program and sold back its shares to GM, Yoshioka said.

“Honda remains committed to various research and development initiatives aimed at providing new mobility solutions to our customers in Japan,” Yoshioka said. “We will continue to explore alternative products and services.”

Honda sees big potential for hydrogen-powered vehicles

Hydrogen technology plays a critical role in Honda’s long-term strategy. Honda wants 5 percent of the global market for hydrogen fuel cell trucks in 2030 and a 30 percent share by around 2040.

The world’s largest maker of internal combustion engines intends to phase out gasoline-burning power plants by 2040 and sell only battery-electric or fuel cell vehicles by then.

Honda said last year it plans to have production capacity to sell some 2 million EVs and fuel cells globally in 2030. The 2 million EVs and fuel cell vehicles Honda will be prepared to produce in 2030 would represent about 40 percent of its 5 million global output plan that year.

From the mid-2020s, Honda said it aims to begin sales of fuel cell systems at the level of around 2,000 a year. But by 2030, Honda plans to introduce the new-generation hydrogen system.

By 2030 Honda envisions fuel cell deliveries of up to 60,000 a year. By the late 2030s, it envisions annual sales reaching hundreds of thousands.

Competitors including Hyundai, BMW and Toyota are also bullish on fuel cell vehicles, even if there is a wider consensus from industry analysts that suggests medium- and heavy-duty trucking would be the first practical application for fuel cells in transportation.

For its part, GM has multiple partnerships working to apply its hydrogen fuel cell systems, from mining vehicles to cement mixers. One with Japanese heavy equipment maker Komatsu, for instance, plans to test a hydrogen fuel cell mining vehicle prototype by the middle of the decade.