Honda Insight's Future

1. Introduction

1.1 Company Introduction

Mr. Soichiro Honda, who was born in Hamamatsu, in the Shizuoka Prefecture of Japan in year 1906, was the founder of one of the world’s mightiest motor corporations HONDA and Honda was founded on Hamamatsu, Japan in year 24 September 1946. As a teenager, Soichiro Honda was apprenticed to a car repair shop in Tokyo but business was slack as there were few cars in the city at that time. However this changed after the devastation of the year 1923 earthquake. The Japanese government decided to invest in mechanized mass transit. To his luck, Mr. Honda found his services in heavy demand.

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. is a Japanese public multinational corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than 14 million internal combustion engines each year. Honda became the second-largest Japanese automobile manufacturer in 2001. Honda was the eighth largest automobile manufacturer in the world behind General Motors, Volkswagen Group, Toyota, Hyundai Motor Group, Ford, Nissan, and PSA in 2011.

Honda was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer to release a dedicated luxury brand, Acura, in 1986. Aside from their core automobile and motorcycle businesses, Honda also manufactures garden equipment, marine engines, personal watercraft and power generators, amongst others. Since 1986, Honda has been involved with artificial intelligence/robotics research and released their ASIMO robot in 2000. They have also ventured into aerospace with the establishment of GE Honda Aero Engines in 2004 and the Honda HA-420 Honda Jet, which began production in 2012.

In 2013, Honda invests about 5.7% (US$ 6.8 billion) of its revenues in research and development. Also in 2013, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to be a net exporter from the...