Let's take a trip to India to celebrate Honda's 500 millionth motorcycle. The Japanese manufacturer boasts extraordinary results: in 2024, it produced 20.4 million motorcycles and sold 20.57 million.

It is the world's leading manufacturer, with a 40% share of the global market, and in recent months it has doubled the half a billion motorcycles produced since its foundation and after the first D-Type produced in 1949. To experience this milestone firsthand, Honda invited us to its gigantic factory in Vithalapur, India, where the 500,000,000th two-wheeler (it's quite impressive to write that) rolled off the production line: an Activa scooter.

We couldn't miss the opportunity to tell you about what we saw during our visit to India to celebrate 500 million Honda motorcycles: from Honda's plans to the motorcycles we encounter on Indian roads, from the structure of a dealership to how the Honda Activa is made.

Everything in India is gigantic when it comes to pure market numbers (which exceeded 18 million motorcycles sold in fiscal year 2024-2025!), and this characteristic makes India increasingly decisive in the global motorcycle arena. To give a more concrete idea: Honda's growth acceleration is such that while 200 million units were produced in 2008, it took six years (2014) to reach 300 million, but only five years to reach 400 million (2019) and now - despite the disastrous 2020 - we are celebrating 500 million, right here in India. And if the 300 millionth motorcycle produced was the monumental Gold Wing, it is now symptomatic that it is a scooter produced on the subcontinent, the Activa, that is cutting the ribbon of celebration here in Vithalapur, Gujarat