Honda suspends plans for Ontario EV plant ‘indefinitely’ | Here's what we know so far

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Honda is confirming that it is indefinitely suspending plans for a 15 billion dollar electric vehicle plant in Alliston. This comes as we get new data showing EV sales are on the rise in Canada. CTV's Kamal Kheraj Ali joins us live with more. Thank you so much Kamal for joining us this morning. So what do we know about why Honda is suspending its Ontario EV plant and what ripple effect will have in this industry? Yeah, hey Arda. Uh Honda saying that it has notched its first ever full year loss at 2.7 billion dollars. A big reason why it's choosing to suspend this Honda plant that was slated to be built in Alliston, Ontario. That's about an hour's drive outside of Toronto. And it's really saying that even though Canada's EV sales are robust and growing, the United States has such a big piece of the pie when it comes to sales and the uncertainty around the sales there, especially when it comes to the scaling back of EV incentives by the Trump administration, really playing a big role as to why it's pivoting and not going ahead with this plant. So we've heard from Honda today saying that once again, they have are experiencing its first ever full year loss at 2.7 billion dollars, but also highlighting changing business conditions, government policies on EVs, and once again, the Trump administration scaling back on incentive programs as to why it is not going ahead with this.

[00:01:37]And we've also heard from the union representing Honda's supply chain workers. They've said that this is just the latest casualty of Trump's anti-EV policies and the punishing 25% tariffs on Canadian-made vehicles. They're saying the tariffs are quote killing jobs and freezing investment. Arda, so some big words coming out from the uh union.

[00:02:01]Now, it's worth noting that this plant would have added jobs. The jobs that are currently part of making Honda vehicles in Ontario are still safe, but what they're saying is that the 1,000 new manufacturing jobs that this would have created is now up in smoke. Okay, so this comes as Statistics Canada released its EV sales data for March. What are what story are those numbers telling us?

[00:02:25]Yeah, and and it's showing that Canada is really sort of and Canadian car buyers are gravitating towards EVs, Ardo. We have a couple of stats from Statistics Canada released this morning and it shows that there were more than 21,000 new zero-emission vehicles or ZEVs sold in March. That is an increase and you're not reading that wrong. That is an increase of roughly 75% year-over-year compared to March of 2025. So, a big big bump in ZEV sales year-over-year. Let's not forget the Carney government introduced this EV incentive, this rebate program that gives back as much as $5,000 for purchasing an EV. So, really that came into effect in February. This is the first full month because these are March's numbers that we're seeing them come into play. So, a tale of two stories where EV sales are going up in Canada, but Honda scaling back on its manufacturing because of US sales dropping.

[00:03:31]Kamal, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:03:33]CTV's Kamal Kheraj.