Honda Motor Co. has pushed back production of its next-generation CR-V in North America by several months and cancelled plans to build the next Civic sedan in Indiana, according to two separate media reports.
The redesigned CR-V is the first model in the hybrid programme Honda put at the centre of its strategy after scrapping three EVs for the US market earlier this year.
Automotive News reported on late Tuesday that Honda has delayed the start of CR-V production by three months, to March 2027, citing a single supply-chain source.
Nikkei reported separately that the Japanese automaker will push back mass production of its next-generation hybrids in North America by several months.
The two outlets do not give the same date.
Nikkei said mass production of the overhauled SUV has been pushed back to at least April 2027, and that output of the hybrid version in the US is expected to be delayed until May or later.
Neither report gave a reason for the delay in the portions that are publicly available.
A Schedule Honda Had Just Accelerated
The delay reverses part of a timetable that was brought forward only weeks ago.
Nikkei reported in September that Honda would start building the next CR-V in North America as early as February 2027, several months ahead of the original plan.
That schedule had production beginning in Ontario in February, with plants in Indiana and Ohio following in March.
A start in April or later would therefore erase about two months of that advance in Canada, and a May start in the US would do the same for the American plants.
Lower First-Year Volume
The supply-chain source also told Automotive News that first-year volume has been cut by 6.7% to 41,315 vehicles.
That implies a previous plan of about 44,300 units.
The figure is a fraction of the model’s annual sales, and it was not clear which plant or period it covers.
The CR-V is Honda’s best-selling vehicle in the US, with 336,844 units sold in the first nine months of 2026, up 9.5% from a year earlier.
September sales rose 21.9% to 34,788 units, American Honda said on October 1.
Third-quarter CR-V sales climbed 16.6% to 110,730 units, of which 59,668 were hybrids, a record for the period.
Hybrid versions made up 53% of the CR-V sales mix, the company said.
Civic Sedan Dropped
Honda has also cancelled a plan to build the next Civic sedan at its plant in Greensburg, Indiana, from March 2028, the source told Automotive News.
Civic sedan production in Ontario is not affected, according to the report.
The decision would unwind a move first reported by Reuters in March 2025, when sources said Honda would build the next-generation Civic in Indiana instead of Guanajuato, Mexico, to avoid US tariffs.
That plan called for annual output of about 210,000 units from May 2028, a start that had itself been moved back from November 2027.
The Greensburg plant opened in 2008, employs more than 2,600 people and has capacity for 250,000 vehicles a year, according to Honda.
It builds the CR-V and Civic, including hybrid versions of both.
“So we are at capacity,” Plant Lead Roxanna Metz told WRBI Radio in May 2025.
“We can run 250-thousand vehicles a year and that’s what we do,” she said.
Honda sold 195,135 Civics in the US in the first nine months of 2026, up 5.4% from a year earlier.
The Civic hybrid accounted for 35% of the model’s sales mix in September, American Honda said.
The EV Retreat
The CR-V carries more weight in Honda’s plans than a routine model change.
Honda cancelled three EVs planned for US production in March, two from its flagship 0 Series and the Acura RSX.
In May, the company confirmed an indefinite hold on its C$15 billion ($10.5 billion) EV complex in Alliston, Ontario.
It has since said it will launch up to 15 next-generation hybrid models by the end of March 2030, most of them aimed at North America.
The next hybrid system is designed to cut production cost by more than 30% and improve fuel economy by more than 10%, according to Honda.
The constraint on that plan is capacity. Chief Executive Toshihiro Mibe said in July that Honda’s seven North American plants, with annual capacity of 1.67 million units, were running close to full.
Honda is in the final stage of preparations for a new hybrid assembly plant in Ohio, an investment of 300 billion yen to 400 billion yen ($1.9 billion to $2.5 billion) with production targeted for 2030, Nikkei reported in September.
A Honda Spokesman said at the time that no decision had been made on a new US plant.
Until any new factory opens, the next CR-V and the hybrids that follow it must be built inside the existing plants, where the reported changes at Greensburg now leave the Civic sedan to Ontario.
