Honda Motor will “strengthen its production system” for automatic transmissions (AT) at its Hamamatsu factory in Japan, as demand continues to increase worldwide, the automaker said on Wednesday.
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As a result of the expansion of its automobile business in each region, the automaker now expects sales of more than 4.5m units by 2010, an increase of more than 1.1m compared with 2005.
To handle the associated expected rise in demand for automatic transmissions and related technical advances (most cars sold in the key US and Japanese markets have automatic transmissions), Honda will boost production at Hamamatsu, the lead factory for AT production.
Transmission production capacity will be increased, with a major portion of the planned increase occurring in-house, to respond to the growing demand for transmission gears, which require sophisticated production engineering.
The current Hamamatsu motorcycle plant will become a transmission gear production plant housing all processes, from moulding to machining. Construction of a new casting plant and renovation of the machining and assembly lines are included in the automaker’s plans.
Hamamatsu will also step up the transfer of production technology developed there to other Honda production facilities around the world.
The automaker has two large automatic transmission plants in the US – in Georgia and Ohio. Since production began in the mid-1980s. Honda has built close to 10m AT units in the US, according to data on its web site.
