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Dongfeng Honda's third plant in Wuhan, a Honda joint venture in China, has been officially completed and put into production, and intends to sell Chinese-made Honda cars to Europe, Kyodo news agency reported.

Dongfeng Honda's third plant in Wuhan has been officially put into production with an investment of 3 billion yuan. the project plans to be implemented in two phases, with an additional annual production capacity of 120000 vehicles in the first phase, and the first offline model is CR-V, and then the plant will also produce Honda's hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electric models. In addition, Dongfeng Honda's first and second plants have a total annual production capacity of 510000 vehicles, meaning that Dongfeng Honda has an annual production capacity of 630000 vehicles, while Dongfeng Honda sold 720000 vehicles in 2018.

In addition, with the production capacity of Guangzhou Auto Honda, another Honda joint venture in China, Honda has a total production capacity of 1.25 million vehicles in China. Meanwhile, Honda's sales in China reached 1.4 million in 2018.

According to Kyodo news agency, Honda's decision to end car production in the UK and other places is pushing ahead with the restructuring of global strongholds in an effort to increase production capacity and further expand sales in China, the world's largest market.

Due to poor sales in Europe, Honda decided to adjust the global market based on the status quo, including plans to close its plant in Swinton in the UK in 2021, to end production in the UK, and to close its Turkish plant. As a result, Honda is considering exporting hybrid and electric cars from its Wuhan plant to the European market in the future.

With regard to the current decline in sales in the Chinese market, Honda President Takahiro Baxiang said, "although it may be difficult to achieve rising growth in the future, [China] is still a potential market." Based on this, Baxiang Longhong also said that sales in China will surpass that of the United States in the next two to three years, and it is necessary to expand production capacity.

Honda's sales in China rose 25.8 per cent in March from a year earlier to 122700, and Honda's cumulative sales from January to March reached 335000, up 11.4 per cent from a year earlier, according to the data.

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