Honda, Nissan detail merger plan, add Mitsubishi
Honda and Nissan have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to start discussions on a joint holding company. A separate MoU explores a further merger with Mitsubishi.
This follows an MOU back in March for a strategic partnership for the era of vehicle intelligence and electrification. The deal to include Mitsubishi would create a company that would approach the scale of Toyota, the world’s largest car maker.
The deal covers a standardized platform for the companies to benefit from economies of scale and reducing development costs. The combined company would have a capacity of 8.5m vehicles, compared to 11m for Toyota, but would also be able to take on Foxconn and Chinese car makers as key emerging competitors.
VW in Europe has a capacity of 9.3m, but over the weekend has agreed production cuts with unions. This will see 35,000 reductions in jobs by natural wastage rather than redundancies, and reduces capacity at three plants in Germany.
Nissan and Honda will establish an integration preparatory committee to manage the integration and will conduct focused discussions, with the aim of an agreement by June and the deal to go through by August 2026.
As part of the merger, the two will merge their R&D for next-generation software-defined vehicles (SDVs), which will benefit Nissan. Honda is already testing SDV and self-driving vehicles on public roads in India and is planning to show its Series 0 SDV vehicles at CES in the US next week.
- Honda looks to first commercial driverless car in 2026
- VW moves to production of self-driving ID.buzz
- Foxconn brings contract manufacturing to EVs
The aim is also to cut supplier costs, which will put pressure on companies such as Renesas Electronics as a major chip supplier to all three companies.
“Today marks a pivotal moment as we begin discussions on business integration that has the potential to shape our future. If realized, I believe that by uniting the strengths of both companies, we can deliver unparalleled value to customers worldwide who appreciate our respective brands. Together, we can create a unique way for them to enjoy cars that neither company could achieve alone,” said Makoto Uchida, Nissan Director, President, CEO and Representative Executive Officer
Honda Director and Representative Executive Officer Toshihiro Mibe said: “Creation of new mobility value by bringing together the resources including knowledge, talents, and technologies that Honda and Nissan have been developing over the long years is essential to overcome challenging environmental shifts that the auto industry is facing. Honda and Nissan are two companies with distinctive strengths. We are still at the stage of starting our review, and we have not decided on a business integration yet, but in order to find a direction for the possibility of business integration by the end of January 2025, we strive to be the one and only leading company that creates new mobility value through chemical reaction that can only be driven through synthesis of the two teams.”
“At this time of change in the automobile industry, which is said to occur once every 100 years, we hope that Mitsubishi Motors’ participation in the business integration discussions of Nissan and Honda will lead to further social change, and that we will be able to become a leading company in creating new value in mobility through business integration,” he said.
“Nissan and Honda will start the discussion from today onwards with an aim to clarify the possibility of business integration by around the end of January in line with the consideration of Mitsubishi Motors.”
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