DETROIT – Honda forecasts its annual light-vehicle sales to rise 2 million units from projected fiscal-2013 levels, to 6 million units globally by fiscal 2017, Honda CEO Takanobu Ito tells media at the North American International Auto Show here.
The auto maker’s global deliveries for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013, should tally about 4 million units.
Honda also is setting its sights on increasing North American production. It already builds more vehicles in the region than any other Japanese auto maker, with an estimated 1.681 million units in 2012, a 52% gain on 2011’s 1.103 million, according to WardsAuto data.
The auto maker now is aiming to build 2 million units annually in North America by 2015. “(That) will represent about 95% of our sales in the United States,” Ito says of the new target.
Also at the show, Honda North American Regional Operations chief Tetsuo Iwamura tells select media in a roundtable interview that the auto maker this year “would like to challenge our record” of 1.55 million Honda- and Acura-brand units sold in the U.S. The record was set in 2007.
