Honda launched the Shine 100 motorcycle in 2023, after their non-compete clause with Hero following their split came to an end. Since then, Honda sold more than three lakh units in the first year alone, excluding exports. It is not quite a large percentage of their monthly sales of nearly three lakhs in the Indian market, though, mainly courtesy of the Activa, which sells more than one lakh units almost every month.
So it is no surprise that Honda’s global motorcycle business predicts that, by the end of their current fiscal year, they will have sold 2.02 crore motorcycles. That’s a staggering number, which covers about 40 per cent of the global two-wheeler market. The vast majority of these sales are expected to come from the Indian and Southeast Asian markets, primarily Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. These markets are expected to account for 1.71 crore, while Japan, Europe, and the USA are expected to cover only six per cent of sales, with a combined total of 12 lakh motorcycles.
One of the major contributors to Honda’s global sales performance is the Activa, which reached the three crore sales milestone in June 2023; it took 15 years for the Activa to reach one crore sales, but it managed twice that in the next seven years. The Honda Activa became the best-selling scooter in the world in 2017 and, amazingly, the world’s most-produced two-wheeler is another Honda, the Honda Supercub, which hit the 10-crore production milestone, also in the year 2017.
Despite these incredible sales numbers, Honda’s line-up for the last few years felt a bit lacklustre, without the crazy motorcycles that only Honda could make, such as the CBX1000, NR750, VTR1000SP1, Valkyrie Rune and such, from the pages of history. The only ground-breaking bike in their lineup is the CRF450RL, which is essentially a road-legal race bike, just like the aforementioned VTR1000SP1 and the Honda RC213V-S. Will Honda be able to go back to their way of making incredible motorcycles just for the heck of it, like they did back in the day? Well, as the manufacturer of 40 per cent of all motorcycles sold in the world, they should be able to make a few models here and there for enthusiasts.
Leave a Reply