With Lingxi, Honda and Dongfeng want to expand their product range in China. According to the portal “CN EV News”, it is therefore planned to place the vehicles under the new brand in a different price segment than Honda’s all-electric e:NS series. A first concept car was presented directly with the announcement of the new brand: The e-limousine Lingxi L comes in a playful, dynamic design and is to be based on a new all-electric platform. It will therefore explicitly not use the technical basis of the joint venture’s existing electric cars. Details about the new e-platform are not yet known. Nor are there any details about the electric sedan itself.
Johiro Watanabe, General Manager of Dongfeng Honda, said at the launch event of Lingxi: “Dongfeng Honda’s challenging spirit has brought forth generations of unique and attractive products. From the past to the future, Dongfeng Honda will always move forward hand in hand with users.” With the new brand, he said his company aims to create a new electric travel experience with “ultimate personality”, “pure fun” and “reassuring safety” for Generation Z users.
It has been known for some time that Dongfeng Honda is planning ten new electric models by 2030. From 2035, Honda then wants to sell only purely electric models in China, as reported. Against this background, Honda gave a preview of new electric models at the Shanghai auto show this spring: the new e:NP2 and e:NS2 electric cars, which were shown there as prototypes, are to supplement the e:NP1 and e:NS1 models already available in China from the beginning of 2024. Honda did not provide any technical data at the time. However, just like the first two Honda electric vehicles for the Chinese market, the two new vehicles are two variants of the same model, which will be sold in future by the joint ventures Dongfeng Honda and GAC Honda.
The third concept vehicle presented by Honda in Shanghai is the e:N SUV, the production model of which is to be launched on the Chinese market “before the end of 2024”. This will be the first representative of “the e:N architecture W developed exclusively for the EV models of the e:N series”, the Japanese announced at the trade fair. With the introduction of these models, announced for 2024, Honda wants to pave the way for selling 100 per cent electric cars in China by 2035.
According to information from 2022, the Japanese car maker wants to launch a total of 30 electric models on the market by 2030 and then achieve a sales volume of more than two million electric vehicles per year. By 2040, Honda also wants to increase its EV and FCEV sales worldwide to 100 percent.
