Honda has filed environmental permits with the Ohio EPA for a proposed third manufacturing plant that could rise on roughly 300 acres the company already owns in Union County, just south of its East Liberty Auto Plant. The filing identifies the project under the internal codename Project Sunrise and signals that Honda is eyeing the site to build hybrid Honda and Acura vehicles.
The permit application, first detailed by The Columbus Dispatch, pins the proposed footprint to land spanning Liberty and Perry townships. According to Columbus Business First, Union County property records confirm Honda already owns the parcel identified in the filing, which sits immediately adjacent to its existing East Liberty operations.
Construction on Project Sunrise is tentatively scheduled to run from January 2027 through the end of 2029, with the proposed plant expected to employ approximately 3,000 workers, per the application reviewed by Marysville Matters. The filing states the facility is needed to maintain North American vehicle supply as demand grows, the outlet reports.
A Multi-Billion-Dollar Bet on Hybrids
Industry estimates place the total investment for the proposed hybrid assembly plant between $1.8 billion and $2.5 billion, with an anticipated annual production capacity of around 250,000 vehicles, Columbus Business First reports. Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe had previously indicated that a new North American plant would be necessary to meet rising demand, the outlet notes.
The Ohio EPA disclosure landed just days after Honda's global announcement on October 9, in which the automaker detailed plans to introduce 15 next-generation hybrid models worldwide by March 2030, targeted primarily at North American consumers. Marysville Matters frames the Central Ohio filing as a direct extension of that corporate strategy, as Honda shifts emphasis toward hybrid production to match near-term consumer adoption trends.
A Honda spokesperson confirmed the authenticity of the Ohio EPA filing but cautioned that the automaker has not yet finalized an official investment decision on the plant, according to the same Columbus Business First report. Regulatory filings of this kind often precede formal groundbreakings by months, the outlet notes, meaning Project Sunrise remains a proposal rather than a locked-in commitment.
Building On an Existing Supply Chain
Any new hybrid plant would plug into a regional supply chain Honda has already built out. L-H Battery Company, a $4.4 billion joint venture between Honda and LG Energy Solution in nearby Jeffersonville, began mass production of lithium-ion cells in July, with plans to scale to 2,200 full-time associates, according to the Record-Herald.
In September, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a 10-year job creation tax credit for Sebang Lithium Battery to build a plant in Jeffersonville that will add 443 jobs supplying battery modules to the Honda-LG venture, as Hoodline reported on the Sebang deal. It marks Sebang's first U.S. manufacturing site, according to Columbus Business First.
Nearly Five Decades of Manufacturing History
Union County has anchored Honda's American manufacturing operations since the first Honda Accord rolled off the Marysville Auto Plant line on November 1, 1982, making Honda the first Japanese automaker to build vehicles in the United States, according to American Honda Motor Co. The Marysville complex marked its 15 millionth cumulative vehicle in April 2024, and the facility now spans 3.6 million square feet with more than 4,000 employees, the automaker says.
Honda has also been retooling its existing Ohio footprint for flexible production. In October 2022, the company announced a $700 million investment across its Marysville, East Liberty, and Anna plants to create an EV Hub capable of assembling electric, hybrid, and gas-powered vehicles on the same lines, according to JobsOhio, with the effort backed by state development incentives.
Local officials have yet to detail how a facility the size of Project Sunrise would affect infrastructure in Liberty and Perry townships, including water and sewer capacity, or how state tax incentive negotiations might proceed. For now, the project remains defined by what Honda has filed with regulators rather than what the company has formally committed to build.
