Honda Took Pride in Doing Everything Itself. The Cost of Technology Made That Impossible.

The car maker outsources key tech for electric vehicles and autonomous driving to fight high R&D costs

Aug. 5, 2018 12:00 p.m. ET

TOKYO—A semiautonomous Honda SUV was traveling down a test track at 20 miles an hour in March last year when a child-size test dummy moved into the middle of the road. Oblivious, the Honda mowed it down.

It was part of a brutal day of Japanese government testing for Honda Motor Co. HMC 1.81% , whose vehicle was equipped with a camera and sensors that were supposed to detect obstacles and apply brakes to avoid a collision. The SUV scored 0.2 out of a possible 25 points in the pedestrian portion of the test, the worst among tested vehicles.

With its long heritage of technical prowess, Honda was determined to do better—and it did. But Honda engineering didn’t get it there. The car maker turned to an off-the-shelf sensing kit from Robert Bosch GmbH, the companies said. With the Bosch technology, the new Honda Civic took the same test in November and scored 24.4 out of 25.




Honda’s decision to go shopping points to a radical culture change at one of Japan’s proudest companies, where founder Soichiro Honda in the 1960s said, “We refuse to depend on anyone else.” The struggle at the entrepreneurial success story cuts deep into Japan’s sense of itself as a global leader in technology.

Honda once used staff technicians to design new technologies ranging from engines to the shape of the suspension arms. Today, Honda believes rapid shifts in technology mean it can no longer afford to keep pace working solely on its own.

That is raising hackles among some within the company who complain about “PowerPoint engineering”—where engineers assemble slides showing how they will patch together others’ technology rather than build it themselves.

“Honda is changing things that Honda should not change,” said Hideaki Tsuru, who worked in Honda’s R&D arm for 20 years until retiring in 2016. He said making unique products is “Honda’s soul.”

Car makers around the world are under stress from the huge investments needed to develop new technologies used in electric vehicles and autonomous driving. To trim costs, most are leaning on megasuppliers such as Bosch, Continental AG and Denso Corp. , as well as smaller companies with cutting-edge technology such as Intel Corp. subsidiary Mobileye.

“We want to work with those that possess the best technology, regardless of whether they are Japanese suppliers or American ones or European ones,” said Honda’s chief executive, Takahiro Hachigo, in an interview.

Honda has announced deals with Chinese search giant Baidu Inc. to develop mapping technology for autonomous vehicles, and with Chinese startup SenseTime Co. to build camera software for self-driving vehicles. The company has a deal with SoftBank Corp. for artificial intelligence that SoftBank says will be able to read a driver’s emotions, so that in the future cars can perform tasks such as suggesting music based on your mood.

Honda, which prides itself above all on its engines, is farming out the development of an electric motor. Hitachi Ltd.’s auto-parts division has the majority stake in a joint venture with Honda that will make electric motors for Honda cars by March 2021. By 2030, two-thirds of its cars will be partially or fully electric, Mr. Hachigo said. In June, Honda also said it would buy electric-car batteries from General Motors Co.




For Honda, whose official name translates as Honda Technical Research Industry, the shift to outsourcing is forcing it to rethink its identity as a creator of unique auto technologies. Some of its most famous products include a navigation system that pre-dated civilian use of GPS, and the CVCC engine, which used less fuel and cut emissions. At the time of the engine’s unveiling in 1972, Honda’s then-head of engine research, Shizuo Yagi, trumpeted: “We at Honda did everything on our own.”

For many Japanese, Honda reflected the originality and self-confidence that turned the country into an industrial powerhouse after World War II. Today, Japanese manufacturers’ lead in quality over upstarts in South Korea and China is narrowing, and Japan’s car industry has fallen behind Silicon Valley and Europe on the software development needed to build complex self-driving vehicles.

In recent years, the challenges of competing with bigger companies with higher profits—in particular Toyota Motor Corp. —have dogged Honda. Bigger companies have an advantage in absorbing the high cost of developing technology. Honda’s R&D budget was about 5% of revenue last year, compared with Toyota’s 3.5% of revenue.

Toyota, which makes about 10 million cars a year, twice Honda’s number, has said it would spend billions of dollars on in-house research into self-driving cars. The company took full ownership of Daihatsu in 2016 and owns stakes in Mazda Motor Corp. and Subaru Corp. The companies work together on next-generation technologies, helping lower Toyota’s costs.

The alliance of Renault SA, Nissan Motor Co. and Mitsubishi Motor Corp. aims to sell 14 million cars by 2022. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s late CEO Sergio Marchionne once called for a merger to create a car maker that could sell 15 million vehicles a year, in part to achieve greater savings, although he later said the company could survive on its own. It shipped 4.7 million cars last year.

Mr. Hachigo has said Honda isn’t interested in merging with another car maker.

The company was founded in 1946 by Soichiro Honda, a tinkerer who loved to battle the giants with his own innovations. He and a dozen workers took engines intended for small electric generators and attached them to bicycles, the first Honda product. Within 15 years, a Honda motorcycle was beating European rivals at the Isle of Man motorcycle race.

Around that time, Mr. Honda rushed out a prototype automobile despite having almost no experience in building them, in defiance of a planned Japanese law that would have restricted entry in the market.

Today, Honda employs more than 200,000 people around the world. As it grew, the company started to prioritize profits over innovation, a cost-cutting strategy that lowered quality and led to a backlash from fans and hurt sales, former Honda executives said.

The global financial crisis in 2008 and floods in Thailand in 2011, which disrupted the supply of parts, hammered Honda’s profits. The chief executive at the time, Takanobu Ito, sought to overhaul the company to make it leaner and bigger, fearing Honda would be left behind if it didn’t pursue Toyota-like scale.

In 2012, Mr. Ito said Honda would double car sales to six million by 2017 by concentrating on sales in emerging markets like China and India. Key to that strategy was an updated Fit hatchback that would be of high-enough quality to be sold in the U.S. and Japan, but inexpensive enough for India and China. Mr. Hachigo, in the interview, said that idea was impractical because of the vast differences in the markets.

Mr. Ito sought to rein in the independence of Honda’s powerful research and development arm in an effort to trim spending on projects with no obvious commercial benefit—a past project had researchers studying the cockroach nervous system, according to former engineers and executives. The group still operates with its own parallel management structure, but research projects need the approval of headquarters, one of the former executives said.

The rush for size combined with efforts to cut costs caused disarray. Honda’s ninth-generation Civic, which went on sale in 2011, was panned for its poor-quality materials. Critics pointed to poor handling and a cheap interior, which were uncharacteristic of past Hondas. The Fit, which shared many components with the Civic, had to be recalled five times in the year following its introduction in 2013.

By the end of his term, Mr. Ito was already reversing course, dropping his sales target and allowing engineers more leeway in designing the 10th generation Civic, which got favorable reviews.

Mr. Hachigo, a Honda lifer who had helped build the China business, took over in 2015. Echoing his predecessor’s own self-criticism, Mr. Hachigo said the company spread itself too thin chasing growth.

The new tone was clear in the announcement last year on the deal with Hitachi for electric motors. “Rather than one company doing everything, it is important to gather the best parts and assemble them into one vehicle,” Mr. Hachigo said.

Potential tariffs or revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement could complicate Honda’s business. The car maker assembles about three-quarters of the vehicles it sells in the U.S. at American factories. But it has expanded in Mexico, where its latest plant, in Celaya, can produce 200,000 cars and SUVs, over half of which are exported to the U.S.

Honda’s changed strategy emerged in the back-and-forth over Honda Sensing, its semiautonomous driving system. Earlier versions of the system were co-developed by Honda and a subsidiary, called Honda Elesys, which was sold in 2013. One person who worked on it said that by 2014 Honda was talking to Bosch about supplying a new system because the Elesys system couldn’t reliably distinguish pedestrians from other objects—Honda warned on its Japanese website the camera might not properly identify objects smaller than 1 meter or taller than 2 meters.

The car maker had hoped to persuade Bosch to build something unique for it but eventually decided to buy an off-the-shelf system after the German company, which deals with practically every major auto maker, said it was impractical, the person said.

Spokespeople at both companies confirmed that Honda uses Bosch equipment for Honda Sensing but declined to discuss the decision-making process. Honda Sensing, which is meant to assist the driver on tasks such as maintaining a constant distance behind another vehicle or in sudden braking to avoid an accident, is now standard on many models.

The company’s next challenge is to develop cars with fuller self-driving abilities. Honda has said it plans to sell a vehicle that can drive autonomously on highways by 2020.

Its peers have more ambitious schedules: Nissan has said its vehicles will be able to drive themselves on city streets by 2020, while GM has said it aims to run a large-scale fleet of driverless cars in big U.S. cities by 2019.

Honda said it wants to combine in-house research with the fruits of tie-ups such as the one with SenseTime, the Chinese company that builds software to identify people and objects seen through a car’s cameras.

In a demonstration for journalists last summer, Honda’s self-driving prototype rolled through a stop sign without halting. A Honda spokesman said the vehicle was an early prototype and that its performance is now much improved as a result of collaboration with SenseTime.

Honda’s eventual self-driving system will likely have only a fraction of its software written by Honda engineers, said Yuji Yasui, chief engineer for autonomous vehicles.

“Car makers focus on developing some things, suppliers on others,” he said. “We haven’t changed. What changed is that it is inefficient for Honda to do everything ourselves.”

GM and Honda team up to build an autonomous vehicle

Published 1 Min Ago

Honda is taking a stake in General Motors subsidiary Cruise Holdings as part of a plan for the Japanese and American automakers to work together developing and building an autonomous vehicle.

The investment of $2.8 billion over the next 12 years includes Honda paying GM $750 million immediately as it takes a 5.7 percent stake in Cruise Holdings.

General Motors said the Honda investment puts the Cruise valuation at $14.6 billion. It comes just months after Softbank's Vision Fund invested $2.25 billion in the GM unit.

Together, GM and Honda will develop and build a wide-use autonomous vehicle intended to be deployed worldwide. The vehicle will be manufactured at a General Motors plant, though no date has been set yet for deployment of the vehicle.

"This is the logical next step in General Motors and Honda's relationship, given our joint work on electric vehicles, and our close integration with Cruise," said General Motors Chairman and CEO Mary Barra.

"Together, we can provide Cruise with the world's best design, engineering and manufacturing expertise, and global reach to establish them as the leader in autonomous vehicle technology – while they move to deploy self-driving vehicles at scale."

The move comes at a time when automakers around the world are making multibillion investments and long-range plans for rolling out autonomous-vehicles. Many analysts believe the widespread adoption of these vehicles will likely start to pick up starting in 2021 or 2022.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Honda appears likely to bring its retro Sports EV Concept into production.

Last week, the Japanese car manufacturer unveiled the e prototype, a near-production version of theUrban EV Concept from 2017. This vehicle uses an electric platform designed for A- and B-segment electric vehicles and appears likely to spawn a two-door sports car.

While recently speaking with Autocar, Honda prototype manager Kohei Hitomi said that he’d like to see the vehicle’s platform be used for a sports model.

“It can be any car. It can be a sporty car or a box-type car. Personally, I’d very much welcome a sporty car on that platform,” he said.

If Honda does indeed put the Sports EV Concept into production, it will likely retain many of the concept’s retro styling cues. However, some changes would be made before the vehicle hits the road.

For starters, Honda would likely ditch the squircle-shaped headlights and taillights in favor of round lights, as it’s done with the e prototype. Additionally, a production-spec Sports EV Concept would inevitably feature smaller wheels and maybe ditch the glowing Honda logos found front and rear.

The interior would also be tamed for the road and rather than utilizing a single screen stretching the width of the dashboard, the Sports EV Concept would likely feature the same five-screen layout as the e prototype. An additional screen would be found in place of the rear-view mirror.

Honda has confirmed that the e prototype’s platform is rear-wheel drive, meaning a future electric sports cars should provide customers with more than enough driving thrills.

Along with Honda's announcement of the Honda E electric city car's production name, CEO Takahiro Hachigo today revealed a smattering of other initiatives and plans for Honda's future. Perhaps the most intriguing is a new vehicle platform to be announced next year with a "global model." It will be called Honda Architecture, and Honda says it's going to increase development efficiency and expand parts-sharing between models built on the platform. What Honda didn't tell us was what model we'll see on the platform first. Since the vehicle will be introduced next year, we expect it to be for the 2021 model year. It's tough to say which vehicle will be getting this platform first, as Honda has many global models: Civic, Accord, CR-V, Fit and HR-V.

The Accord and CR-V are both already loosely based on the Civic's platform, so where that car goes, the others will follow and vice-versa. The HR-V is a Fit-based crossover, but the new Fit was announced to be shown at the Tokyo Motor Show this fall — this means it can't be the car using the new platform, since Honda says the "Honda Architecture" is coming to a model announced in 2020. Honda also said this new Fit will be getting a next-generation version of its i-MMD hybrid system. We expect absolutely stellar fuel economy from a hybridized Fit — you can check out the next-gen Fit in spy photos here.

Other news from Honda this morning is trim-related. Hachigo said that the number of variations currently available for its vehicles is too high, leading to excessive complexity and higher costs than necessary. To cure that problem, he said that Honda is going to slash the number of variations at the trim and option level for its global models to one-third of what it has now. Additionally, Honda says it will be "eliminating and consolidating" some similar regional models sold across multiple regions. Just like the new platform vehicle, there's no word on which vehicles will be getting the "eliminating and consolidating" treatment from Honda.

Further electrification claims were made by Hachigo. Honda previously pledged to electrify its entire European lineup by 2025, and now we know the form of electrification that will take. Hachigo said Honda will be expanding its two-motor hybrid system to the whole lineup of Honda vehicles. There was no talk of plug-in hybrids or mass adoption of pure electric vehicles beyond the Honda E. For now, Honda has its partnership with GM to jointly develop EVs, and that's all we know.

Summary of Honda CEO Speech on Automobile Business Direction

Remarks by Takahiro Hachigo, President & CEO, Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

May 8, 2019

Honda has been working on two top-priority management challenges in the midst of abrupt changes in the global business environment surrounding the automobile industry: to strengthen the structure of our automobile business and to further increase the speed of business transformation for future generations.

So, today, I would like to introduce some initiatives we are taking for our automobile business, especially how we are strengthening the structure of our automobile business, the direction we are taking with electrification, as well as some progress we have made to date.

Strengthening automobile business structure

Ever since I became the president of the company, I have been conveying the message that we will make Honda strong by creating strong products and also by strengthening our inter-regional coordination and collaboration. We put special emphasis on the strengthening of our global models, which have been the source of Honda's core competence, and also the enhancement of our regional models.

As a result, we currently have the five global models, namely Civic, Accord, CR-V, Fit/Jazz and Vezel/HR-V, and these five strong models now account for 60% of our global automobile sales. At the same time, our regional models such as the N Series for Japan, Pilot for North America and Crider for China are playing an important role as a source of growth for each respective region.

However, as a result of accommodating regional needs somewhat excessively in each individual region, we recognize that the number of models and variations at the trim and option level have increased and our efficiency has declined. So, we will undertake initiatives to further strengthen our inter-regional coordination and collaboration and advance our art of making automobiles in order to simultaneously increase the attractiveness and efficiency of both global and regional models.

Strengthening inter-regional coordination and collaboration

As for inter-regional coordination and collaboration, under the new operational structure we adopted for our automobile operations starting from April, we began reviewing and sharing the product lineup by grouping some of our six regions outside Japan based on a similarity of key factors, such as market needs and environmental regulations. With this initiative, by 2025, we will reduce the total number of variations at the trim and option level for our global models to one-third of what we have now. In addition, we will increase efficiency by eliminating and consolidating some similar regional models into even more competent models shared across multiple regions.

Advancement of our art of making automobiles (automobile development)

As for the advancement of automobile development, since I became the president, we have been increasing the efficiency and speed of our Monozukuri (the art of making things) by innovating the entire process, from planning and development all the way through production, by enabling the S-E-D-B (sales, manufacturing, R&D, purchasing*1) functions to collaborate beyond the boundaries of their divisions.

Moreover, we have already introduced the Honda Architecture in our development.

The Honda Architecture is a company-wide initiative which will increase the efficiency of development and expand parts-sharing for our mass-production models. The first model being developed with this new method will be the global model we are launching next year. And we will continue increasing the number of models to which we apply this new architecture.

With the strengthening of global and regional models through inter-regional coordination and collaboration and with the introduction of the Honda Architecture, by 2025, we will reduce the number of manhours we use for the development of mass-production models by 30%, and we will repurpose those manhours to accelerate our research and development in advanced areas for the future. In this way, we can continue creating new technologies which will support the future of Honda.

Strengthening our operational structure in the area of production

In addition to the area of development, we are further strengthening our operational structure in the area of production as well, so that we can create strong products with high efficiency.

We are making steady progress in optimizing our production capacity in all regions. When this is complete, we are expecting to see that our global capacity utilization rate, excluding China, will increase from 90% recorded in 2018, and we will be producing at full capacity by 2022.

In China, the third plant of Dongfeng Honda became newly operational, and this put us in a position where we can definitely accommodate market demand in China. We believe that this progress we made paved the way for the optimization of our global production capacity.

From here onward, we think it is important to increase our competitiveness by increasing the efficiency of our production system in North America.

For our business in North America, while keeping pace with sales expansion, we enhanced our model lineup and established a flexible production system where our plants sometimes produce various models in duplication to accommodate changes in market demand. However, as a result of the pursuit of high flexibility, an increase in the investment amount and a decline in production efficiency started to become an issue. Therefore, in North America as well, we will reduce the number of variations at the trim and option level, and at the same time, we will simplify the production model allocation at each plant. Through this initiative, we will re-establish a highly-efficient production system and realize the growth of North American business through the pursuit of quality.

By implementing these initiatives to increase production efficiency in each region, we are expecting to reduce global cost in the area of production by 10% by 2025, compared to the cost recorded in 2018.

Through all these initiatives I have mentioned, we will steadily strengthen the structure of our automobile business and realize the solidification of our existing automobile businesses by 2025, and, at the same time, we will accelerate our preparation for the future.

Direction for the electrification of our automobile products

Striving to realize a carbon-free society, Honda set a goal to electrify two-thirds of our global automobile unit sales by 2030.

When we talk about the introduction of electrified vehicles, there are two perspectives. One is the improvement of fuel economy, and the other is zero emissions. Regulations for the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards are becoming increasingly stringent in every country around the world and complying with CAFE standards is one of the most important challenges for the automobile industry. At Honda, in light of the required infrastructure and how people use automobiles, we believe that hybrid technology is, at this moment, the most effective way for us to comply with CAFE standards. Therefore, we will electrify our products mainly with hybrid technologies. By increasing sales of our hybrid models all around the world, Honda will contribute to the global environment through the improvement of fuel economy.

To this end, we will expand the application of our 2-motor hybrid system to the entire lineup of Honda vehicles. In addition to the 2-motor hybrid system which is compatible with mid-to-large-sized vehicles, we developed a new, more compact 2-motor hybrid system suitable for small-sized vehicles. This small-sized 2-motor hybrid system will be adopted first by the all-new Fit which we are planning to exhibit as a world premiere at the Tokyo Motor Show this fall.

In addition to the expansion of the lineup of products equipped with the 2-motor hybrid system, we also will expand the application of the 2-motor hybrid system on a global basis. With that, by 2022, we are expecting to reduce the cost of the 2-motor hybrid system by 25% compared to the cost of this system in 2018.

As for zero emission vehicles, with our battery EVs we will comply with the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program being adopted by California and other states in the U.S. and China's New Energy Vehicle (NEV) mandate. We will efficiently introduce our battery EVs to the market by selecting the most appropriate partners and resources to satisfy the different needs in each region.

In North America, we will jointly develop battery components with General Motors and introduce highly-competitive battery EVs in the market.

In China, in order to keep up with the fast speed of electrification, we have already begun introducing battery EV models developed together with our local joint venture companies in China. While envisioning the introduction of battery EV models from the Honda brand, we will continue utilizing local resources in China and introduce more battery EV models in a timely manner to fulfill local market needs in China.

In Europe and Japan, we will introduce the Honda e, a new battery EV model, which was recently introduced as a prototype at the Geneva Motor Show.

To summarize, Honda will popularize and improve the business feasibility of electrified vehicles by focusing on hybrid vehicles and battery EVs

Changes in operational structure

In order to ensure the solid implementation of these initiatives I just introduced for our automobile business, we renewed our operational structure as of April. The aims of this structural change are to establish an organization which brings all regional operations together to strongly facilitate inter-regional coordination and collaboration and to increase the speed of our business operations by enabling prompt decisions and prompt execution.

Today, I introduced our initiatives to strengthen our automobile business structure and the direction of our electrification. Under the new organizational structure, we will realize our goals with a keen sense of speed.

Closing

As we stated in our 2030 Vision, Honda is striving to grow through the pursuit of quality so that we can fulfill our vision to "Serve people worldwide with the joy of expanding their life's potential."

Honda will continue taking on new challenges while being driven by strong passion, so that we can continue to be a company that society wants to exist even in 2050 after Honda becomes more than 100 years old.

*1 S-E-D-B: Sales, Engineering (Manufacturing), Development (R&D), Buying (Purchasing)

Honda has already ruled out its pint-sized e hatchback (pictured) for the United States market, but the automaker is plotting a bigger electric vehicle architecture that will eventually underpin cars and SUV destined for these shores.

Honda hasn't announced exact timing for its new EV platform, but the company promises it will launch before 2025. Like the e, Honda's larger EV models will be rear-wheel drive with a rear-mounted electric motor.

"This new architecture is designed to achieve smooth driving and highly efficient packaging," Ayumu Matsuo, Honda's managing officer in charge of power unit development, told Automotive News. "We believe it will meet the needs of customers who like our C-segment and D-segment models.”

Although rear-drive in base form, Honda's EVs will also offer all-wheel drive through the use of an additional motor mounted at the front axle. Honda is also targeting a perfect 50/50 weight distribution to maximize driving dynamics. Range hasn't been discussed, but Honda says its upcoming EVs are being designed for "long-distance travel.”

Honda wants EVs to account for 15 percent of its global sales by 2030.

Honda to cease diesel vehicle sales in Europe by 2021

September 23, 2019

(Reuters) - Honda Motor Co Ltd said on Monday it would phase out all diesel cars by 2021 in favor of models with electric propulsion systems, as the Japanese automaker moves to electrify all of its European cars by 2025.

Honda is the latest automaker cutting production of diesel cars to meet stringent global emissions regulations. The plan is part of its long-term goal to make electric cars, including all battery-electric vehicles, to account for two-thirds of its line ups by 2030 from less than 10% now.

By next year, according to European Union emission targets, CO2 must be cut to 95 gram per km for 95% of cars from the current 120.5 gram average, a figure that has increased of late as consumers spurn fuel-efficient diesels and embrace SUVs. All new cars in the EU must be compliant in 2021.

For Honda, declining demand for diesel vehicles and tougher emissions regulations have clouded its manufacturing prospects in Europe.

Honda said in February it would close its only British car plant in 2021 with the loss of up to 3,500 jobs.

Japan’s No. 3 automaker has said it would cut the number of car model variations to a third of current offerings by 2025, reducing global production costs by 10% and redirecting those savings toward advanced research and development.

The first Honda Civic Type R available to U.S. consumers has been a sales success for the Japanese company. America’s appetite for the the most hardcore Honda continues years after its launch with cars still selling at full price. Despite this, Honda tells Motor1.com it has no plans to expand the Type R name to other models in the brand’s portfolio.

This news comes from Hideki Kakinoma, the project leader for the 2020 Civic Type R. During an interview at an event in Milan, Italy, the engineer shared that Honda has no immediate plans for Type R models outside of the Civic.

“The ‘R’ in Civic Type R has always stood for racing, so expanding into something like an SUV or crossover doesn’t make sense,” Kakinoma-san said. “The Civic is currently the only vehicle in the Honda lineup to meet our requirements of what a Type R needs to be.”

It’s fair, then, to ask about Acura and the TLX and NSX, both of which have racing history (the NSX still races today). Even so, Kakinoma says Honda is unlikely to share the Type R nameplate with Acura on future products.

“When it comes to the Acura brand, Type S is used to dictate a performance flagship, not Type R,” the engineer told Motor1.com.

We can safely infer, based on that comment, that any performance-oriented version of a future Acura model will stick with Type S in its name. Look no further than the recent Type S concept car, which likely previews a future using that name.

Deciding against the expansion of the Type R name is a matter of purity, Honda tells Motor1. Where other manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes have expanded their performance lineups beyond sports cars to include SUVs and other vehicle types, Honda’s intention is to keep its Type R name focused on racing, even if it means missing out on sales. So until the day comes when we see another Honda product worthy of a racetrack, we can expect the Type R name to stay right where it is on the Civic.