Honda's 2020 motorcycle vision

We already know that Honda has targeted emerging nations in Asia and Africa to strengthen its global motorcycle business in future years.

That strategy was outlined in a recent speech by the company's CEO Takanobu Ito, with a huge focus on improving cost competitiveness to match the low prices of Honda's direct competitors in production hubs like India and China.

Closer to home, the General Manager of Honda Motorcycles, Tony Hinton, has added to the futuristic landscape by announcing Honda's 2020 vision, its road map for the next decade.

The vision reads as follows: "Creating products that maximise the joy of customers, with speed, affordability and low C02."

To achieve that broad-ranging vision, Honda has identified three main strategies:

1.    Maintaining high attractiveness and product quality;
2.    Improving cost competitiveness (Ed: Thailand has grown to be a production base for Honda's global models); and
3.    Introducing global models.

Fittingly, Hinton announced the vision at the local press launch of Honda's fuel-saving idle-stop endowed PCX125 scooter, which is the first global model to come out of the company's Thailand production facility. More models are on the way from Thailand, including "sports type" hardware which will released in Australia in due course.

Honda has identified myriad challenges over the next few years as it looks to restore its sales to a level somewhere near its record-breaking peak of 2007.

They include changes in customer behaviour (including purchasing, information gathering and alternative energy acceptance, social media), embracing population change (we are getting older and urban density is also an issue), and motorcycle safety (expanding HART operations, licencing harmonisation, and testing).

A number of those issues play into the hands of the commuter bike, which is one area where Honda will be very active over the next few years - with the PCX just the start of the process.

Over the last five years, on-road bikes have taken over the mantle from off-road as the dominant market segment in Australia. Forty-six per cent of all bikes sold are on-road, ahead of odd-road (38) and ATV (17). In 2005 the figures were 37, 46 and 17 per cent respectively.