Honda’s North American plants producing more

BLOOMBERG NEWS

Honda Motor Co., the carmaker that has abandoned full-year profit forecasts due to floods in Thailand, said plants in North America are exceeding production plans announced last week.

Honda’s six plants in the U.S. and Canada are running at 50 percent to 75 percent of planned output, exceeding the 50 percent rate the automaker expected as of Oct. 31, said Ed Miller, a company spokesman. Production will exceed the 50 percent rate at some U.S. plants through Nov. 23, Tokyo-based Honda said today in a statement. Honda won’t make vehicles Nov. 18 in addition to a “non-production day” Nov. 11.

Thailand’s worst floods in half a century are disrupting parts production and deferring plans by Honda and Toyota Motor Corp., Asia’s biggest carmaker, to boost production and rebuild inventories that were depleted by Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

“We’re getting enough parts from alternative sources and from the original sources that we can confidently say we don’t have to do 50 percent much longer,” Miller said today in a phone interview.

Honda has said 87 percent of its cars and trucks sold in the U.S. were produced in North America last year. Most parts for those vehicles are purchased in North America while “a few critical electric parts” are bought from Thailand, the automaker said last week. John Mendel, who leads Honda’s U.S. sales efforts, had said in an Oct. 31 e-mail to dealers that normal output may not resume until mid- to late-December.

A redesigned version of the automaker’s CR-V small sport- utility vehicle will be introduced on schedule in December, Honda said today. The company had said Oct. 31 that the on-sale date for the model may be delayed by “several weeks.” Deliveries of the model climbed 11 percent this year through October to 180,361, according to Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey- based Autodata Corp.

Honda doesn’t plan any layoffs at its North American plants, the company said in today’s statement.

Honda’s American depositary receipts fell 1.9 percent to $29.94 at 11:36 a.m. MST.