North America as the largest market
North America was the largest market for Honda’s automobile segment in 2023. At nearly six trillion Japanese yen of sales revenue in the region, this market dwarfed all others, including Asia, where the Honda Motor Company recorded the highest volume of automobile sales that year.The U.S.'s preference for bigger, typically more expensive light trucks and sport-utility vehicles over smaller passenger cars, and consumers' satisfaction with Honda and Acura, the group's luxury and performance segment which ranked in the top 15 cars with the highest consumer satisfaction index score, contribute to the company's large North American revenue. The Honda Motor Company held around 8.5 percent of the U.S. market in 2023, with the CR-V, Honda Civic, and Honda Accord being among the best-selling SUV and car models that year. Around 302,400 Honda vehicles were sold on the U.S. market in the fourth quarter of 2023, with the Honda Motor Company’s Acura brand amounting to some 35,100 sales for the same period. Honda ranked sixth for customer satisfaction that year. What makes an automobile brand valuable from a consumer’s standpoint include the quality, fuel economy, handling of varying degrees of terrain, and many other qualities of a car brand. By contrast, Acura ranked two points below the average. At 70 percent, Honda was perceived by car owners as one of the most reliable brands of 2023.
A future marked by innovation
In 2023, Honda Motor Company announced it would start producing a new hydrogen fuel cell system developed jointly with General Motors, the manufacturer with the highest U.S. market share. The Japanese group had been increasing its research and development expenses since its 2021 fiscal year, up to some 852 billion Japanese yen in 2023. While the company is increasingly investing in new powertrain and innovation, forecasts from December 2023 project its Honda brand's passenger car sales revenue will drop to about 3.6 trillion Japanese Yen in 2028, linked with a forecasted decrease in sales. Comparatively, the global passenger car sales from the brand are not expected to decrease, due in part to Honda's stronghold in the Asian market. Statista's projections, however, estimate that an increasing share of the brand's sales will be electric or hybrid vehicles, with certain levels of autonomous driving also gaining more importance through 2028.
