• Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe told a Japanese newspaper that the company is weighing building a new factory in North America, as reported by Automotive News.
• North America is Honda's largest and most profitable market, and Mibe says the company wants to build cars where the most demand is.
• Honda's North American plants are already running at 90 percent capacity, and a new factory would provide more flexibility.

Honda may add a new assembly plant in North America, CEO Toshihiro Mibe said in an interview with a Japanese newspaper, as reported by Automotive News. "I want to increase the number of sales in North America a lot," Mibe told Yomiuri Shimbun. "The basic idea is to produce in a place where there is demand."

Honda is already deeply entrenched in North America. Two factories in Ohio—in East Liberty and Marysville—crank out some of the company's biggest sellers, the CR-V and Accord, while another factory in Greensburg, Indiana, supplies more CR-Vs and the Civic. Honda's larger vehicles, such as the Odyssey and Pilot, hail from Lincoln, Alabama, and Honda also has assembly plants in Mexico and Canada.

Now, Honda may invest even further in the region. North America is Honda's largest and most profitable market, making up around 40 percent of the company's global sales in 2025. But Honda's facilities in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada are already running close to full capacity, prompting Honda to consider a new plant.

Automotive News cites numbers from GlobalData that show the company's U.S. factories operating at 85 percent of their 1.2 million total capacity. When you include all North American factories, the utilization rate rises to 90 percent out of a maximum capacity of 1.8 million vehicles.

An extra factory would help Honda grow its North American sales even further, while also giving the company some extra leeway to handle supply chain disruptions. "[The existing factories are] almost in full production," Mibe said. "If you don't have a buffer, you can’t recover production."

We reached out to Honda to confirm Mibe's statements and will update this story if we hear back. While Honda is considering a new factory, the plans seem to still be in their infancy, and it would likely be several years, possibly even a decade, before a new factory would become operational. Still, it could prove pivotal as Honda chases increased market share in the lucrative U.S. market.