Honda Is Done With EVs In The U.S.

Happy Thursday! It’s March 12, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift — your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, we’re looking at the end of Honda EVs in the States, as well as U.S. buyers’ love affair with cheap used EVs. We’ll also look at BMW’s estimates for 2026, and ICE’s very dumb car deal. 

No automaker is sure how to navigate the changing world of EV regulations. Sales are slowing due to regulatory upheaval, and companies are taking losses on their electric investments. Honda, though, is taking a novel approach to the uncertainty: Calling the whole thing off. From Honda: 

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Honda) today announced that it has made a decision to cancel the development and market launch of three EV (electric vehicle) models that had been planned for production in North America. This decision was made as part of the reassessment of the company’s automobile electrification strategy due to various factors including recent changes in the business environment.

In order to improve the current earnings situation as early as possible, Honda considered various options; however, after careful consideration, the company made the decision to cancel the development and market launch of three EV models that had been planned for production in the U.S., namely the Honda 0 SUV, Honda 0 Saloon, and Acura RSX. Honda determined that starting production and sales of these three models in current business environment where the demand for EVs is declining significantly would likely result in further losses over the long term.

This doesn’t mean Honda is pulling back from EVs globally, but the 0 Saloon, 0 SUV, and RSX are dead for North America. It’s unclear if Honda wants that U.S. production capacity to go towards more profitable vehicles, given the state of tariffs, or if it simply sees EVs as no longer worth the investment. Regardless, this is sure not to be a short-sighted move, and will certainly position Honda well for the future. 

Car buyers in the U.S., though, don’t actually hate EVs. We’re just broke, by and large, and have to wait for such cars to hit the used market before we but — but we do, in fact, buy. More and more, it seems, the used car market is going electric. From Reuters: 

Steep depreciation and improving reliability are drawing more Americans to used electric vehicles, turning the pre-owned market into a key entry point for buyers priced out of new EVs as federal incentives fade.

Falling resale prices that are also driven by rapid advances in ​battery technology, range and software have pushed many second-hand EVs closer in cost to comparable gasoline vehicles, while over-the-air updates ‌and a growing charging network are easing earlier concerns about ownership.

The rollback of incentives that once fueled EV purchases, coupled with higher vehicle prices, is also helping them gain a larger slice of the roughly $800 billion U.S. pre-owned car market.

Remember that the average car on U.S. roads isn’t new — it’s well over a decade old. It’ll take some time for EV adoption to take the majority of car sales, but it seems like that’s the way things are going. Looks like Honda and I are on opposite sides of that bet, though. 

Carmakers are facing a couple of big challenges right now. There’s the uncertainty around tariffs, the impending global financial meltdown, the back-and-forth of EV and emissions regulations, but there’s also another factor: China. Turns out, China’s very good at making cars, and it’s putting other global automakers on notice. From Bloomberg: 

BMW AG sees little room for improving carmaking profitability this year due to tariffs and intensifying competition in China.

The German manufacturer expects an automaking margin of 4% to 6% after the measure declined to 5.3% last year. Sales in China — still BMW’s largest single market — will remain broadly stable, it said Thursday.

Chief Executive Officer Oliver Zipse has managed to keep the luxury-car maker steady despite supply-chain shortages and an uneven shift to electric vehicles. BMW has been faring better on EVs than Mercedes-Benz Group AG and Volkswagen AG’s Audi as it kept factory lines flexible to produce cars with different drivetrains.

Making low but stable profit numbers is the same as entering an unrecoverable tailspin in the eyes of investors, so we’ll have to keep an eye on how BMW’s stock fares after this. This is, of course, a totally functional and reasonable way to build an economy. 

Remember ICE’s big vehicle order from all the way back in the halcyon years of two days ago? Well, not only are the marked vehicles useless to a secret police force, but now Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now reportedly trying to back out of its purchase order. From Automotive News: 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is reportedly trying to cancel the remaining portion of a $2.4 million order for 2,500 SUVs and pickups because the agency has no use for them.

Many of the vehicles, ordered last year by a deputy director who has since resigned to run for Congress in Ohio, already have been delivered to ICE facilities around the country. They were slated to be wrapped with the agency’s logo and newly adopted slogan, “Defend the Homeland,” even though ICE has never used marked vehicles, a source with knowledge of the purchase told the Washington Examiner

“It’s ridiculous because you don’t want to advertise what you’re doing,” another source was quoted in a March 8 story. “We’re just hiding them in a parking garage somewhere because we don’t want to drive them. Who wants to drive the marked vehicles?”

If you have to hide your motives in order to kidnap and disappear people, you should maybe reconsider whether such a thing is worth doing. Someday we’ll look back on ICE like the Gestapo or the SS, but unfortunately we haven’t quite reached that point yet. 

Good thing we all learned our lesson, and are done with both dumb culture wars and wars in the middle east. Now let me just take a big sip of coffee and look at the news. 

Onwards and upwards! This is, to be clear, a bad thing. 

This was my pump-up music en route to last night’s Brooklyn’s Strongest Trans Woman arm wrestling competition. I am not, it turns out, Brooklyn’s strongest trans woman.