The car company is making continuous studies on the technologies of bioethanol production in collaboration with Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth or RITE. The research processes began in 2006, with experiments done in a facility of Honda, the Fundamental Technology Research Center since April 2007.

The cellulosic ethanol process of the RITE-Honda partnership makes use of genetically modified Corynebacterium glutamicum to be able to produce ethanol out of combined sugars. Last November 2008, RITE-Honda had won the Grand Prize of the 18th Nikkei Global Environment Technology Award for their outstanding contribution to biofuel research industry.

Honda decided to create a new research and development institute for them to speed up the production and practical use of their latest technology. It is indeed needed to carry out the research and experiments on a large scale facility to allow them to obtain precise evaluations.

The planned facility, Honda R&D Co., Ltd. Fundamental Technology Research Center, will be constructed within Kazusa Akademia Park located in Kisarazu, Chiba. The car company is intending to construct a single building measuring 1,050 m2 for a research facility on a 5,000 m2 lot. On April 2009, the construction will start to be able to start the facility’s operations in November 2009.

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