Honda Targets 50% of Global Market

Shared platforms with bikes like the CB650R, allow Honda to keep costs in check, prices down, and hopefully sales up.

Honda has laid out its expectations and targets in briefing on its global motorcycle business including the ambitious long-term aim of capturing a 50% share of the worldwide market.

The briefing was held by Minoru Kato, head of Motorcycle and Power Products Operations, Motorcycle Business Unit, and Daiki Mihara who leads the division responsible for electric motorcycles. They explained that Honda is making more than 20 million bikes per year, with the expectation it will sell 20.2 million units in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025. That amounts to roughly 40% of all the motorcycles sold in the world, according to the company’s own research, with around 50 million new bikes finding owners each year. Honda expects all those numbers to grow, saying that by 2030 it believes the worldwide motorcycle market will account for 60 million new sales per year, and in the long term it wants to increase its market share to 50%.

This graphic shows the state of Honda’s position in the current market.

Breaking down the figures a bit more, Honda says that the Asian market is currently dominant in terms of units sold, accounting for 85% of all Honda’s motorcycle production with 17.2 million sales expected by the end of the current financial year. In contrast, the Japanese, European, and US markets make up only 1.2 million sales, or 6% of Honda’s total in terms of units, even though they’re likely to account for a greater proportion of revenues thanks to the fact we tend to buy higher-value machines. Honda’s sales in the 2024 calendar year set records for the company in 37 different countries, and before the end of 2025 the company expects to hit a production milestone by manufacturing the 500 millionth Honda motorcycle since the company started making them in 1948.

The goals heading toward 2030.

Although Honda made little direct mention of its plans for North America in the briefing, the company outlined its strategy for Europe where similar bikes—described as large, low-volume, high-variety models—are popular, saying that it’s increasing its use of “common platforms” where multiple different models are built around a shared chassis and engine. That’s already something the company is skilled at; it’s used common platforms for years on bikes like the CB500-based range and CB650 lineup, and more recently the Africa Twin has shown how a diverse array of machines can be built from a shared set of components, with a range that now includes the NT1100 tourer (expected to come to the US market soon) and, in Japan, the Hawk 11 cafe racer. The next platform expected to come to fruition is the tube frame chassis and radical electric-supercharged V-3 engine that Honda showed at EICMA last year. The company says it will be adopted in future models (plural).

Honda has shown multiple new electric concepts that it hopes to bring to market, with the goal of extending the segment to 4 million EVs per year.

On the electric bike front, Honda wants to increase sales to 4 million electric bikes per year by 2030. While the majority of these are likely to be small bikes, the EV Fun Concept that was shown at EICMA last year is expected to reach production in the near future, followed by a showroom version of the EV Urban Concept scooter that was also displayed and uses many of the same components. To help adoption of electric bikes, Honda wants to make them cheaper, bringing the total cost of ownership of electric bikes over three years down to the level where it’s level with conventional internal combustion engine models. To that end, the company is due to open a dedicated electric motorcycle factory in India in 2028 and working to reduce the cost of the batteries it sources from external suppliers.


New models like the electric-supercharged V-3 shown at EICMA last year, promise to grab the attention of new buyers.

Whether Honda can achieve its target of increasing its domination of the world’s motorcycle industry remains to be seen, as like every other “legacy” brand it’s facing not only the new—and still deeply uncertain—frontier of electrification but also a growing challenge from Chinese and Indian manufacturers that, after years of looking inward at their home markets, are increasingly turning their attentions to exports.

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