The main goal of Honda Motor Company is to focus more on the production of fully or partially electric cars. The automaker hopes that by the year 2030, these cars will account for almost 70% of total global sales. This decision was reached upon following the safety issues that clouded this major car manufacturer. The auto industry is gradually shifting to increased production of environmentally friendly vehicles. This trend has further been steered by the recent diesel-emissions scandal by Volkswagen. Volkswagen has ramped up its plan to introduce a number of electric cars to its current lines.

Five percent of the current sales by Honda are accounted for by the electrified powertrains with most of these being gas-electric hybrids. In March, the company will begin the lease of a fuel-celled sedan in addition to selling a small number of fully electric and plug-in hybrids in the United States market. According to Honda CEO, Takihiro Hachigo, there is a high likelihood for plug-ins and hybrids to account for 50% of Honda’s sales by the year 2030. The other electric cars will account for approximately 15% of the sales.

Mr. Hachigo was officially appointed as Honda’s CEO early last year following a series of safety concerns and recalls. These safety problems forced the automaker to do away with its target of releasing six million cars to the global market on an annual basis by March next year. Its aim has been to lower model variations as well as a platform that will allocate more time to the engineers for fine-tuning the technology. Record sales were posted by the company in 2015 in two of its largest markets, China and the United States. This also marked a 6% rise in global sales with 4.7 million cars being sold. Honda expects that the profits for this ending year will increase by 3% to generate $4.7 billion from car sales.

According to a car analyst at CLSA, Christopher Richter, the target set by Honda is ambitious and yet attainable. What it implies is that most of today’s gasoline vehicles will be transformed into hybrid cars. A new plug-in car by Honda will begin selling in North America by 2018. This is according to Mr. Hachigo. Honda engineers have said that in the past year the company focused more on resolving recalls in addition to meeting the almost-term sales targets. A number of recalls were suffered over the subcompact Fit hybrid with respect to its engine control program and other issues.