Honda’s Auto-Max: A Better Way to Transport Cars?

When it comes to creating things powered by motors, Honda is pretty hard to top. They build everything from generators and dirt bikes to cars and motorcycles to symphony-conducting robots and private jets. But here’s a side of Honda that you might not have known about - they build railway cars.

As a way to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and reduce emissions, Honda’s research and development team teamed up with railway car manufacturer Greenbriar Companies to re-think how its North American built cars leave the factory. The result? Auto-Max.

Prior to the development of the Auto-Max, Honda used single railway car carriers for transporting its cars, which can hold up to 10 cars of a single type and are good for about thirty years of use.

What makes the Auto-Max different is that it includes more than just two tiers. The Auto-Max floors can be adjusted hydraulically, allowing up to 22 vehicles on board a single carrier, and they can be of a variety of different models - including minivans, crossovers and small cars. And what’s more, this carrier has an active lifespan of 50 years before needing a substantial rebuild.

By ensuring that there’s very little by the way of wasted space in each Auto-Max car, Honda is taking a load off the trains that deliver the vehicles to storage from the factory, saving 2,436 gallons of fuel and preventing 54,432 lbs of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, per year.

Currently Honda has 400 Auto-Max railway cars in the US, and its fleet is expected to grow.