This is another alliance taking shape in Japan. This Thursday, Mitsubishi Motors joins the alliance formed by Nissan and Honda to cope with the growing investments to make cars greener.
“Collaboration with partners is essential in today’s automotive industry, which is undergoing rapid change due to technological innovations such as electrification,” Mitsubishi Motors President Takao Kato was quoted as saying in a joint press release.
“The automobile industry is in a period of transformation that occurs only once in a century,” Honda boss Toshihiro Mibe said Thursday, also quoted in the press release.
“We hope that the combination of technologies and know-how cultivated by Nissan and Honda, together with the strength and experience of Mitsubishi Motors, will enable us to more quickly solve the various problems related to electrification” on a global scale, he added.
In software, the electric car.
Honda and Nissan, Japan’s second- and third-largest automakers respectively behind Toyota, announced in March that they were exploring the prospects of collaborating on automotive software platforms, key components for electric vehicles and other complementary products.
Honda and Nissan are particularly considering pooling their resources in electric batteries and have already agreed to “harmonize specifications” so that the batteries “can be used in vehicles from both companies,” they announced in a separate press release.
They also want to explore synergies in software, “including autonomous driving, connectivity and AI, which will determine the value of vehicles in the future and become a source of competitiveness,” they say.
Such partnerships between manufacturers “can offer several strategic advantages in areas such as cost and labor sharing in research and development, economies of scale, and market penetration,” according to analyst Tatsuo Yoshida of Bloomberg Intelligence. However, “while these collaborations can offer significant benefits, their success will depend on effective integration and execution.”
Being able to gain market share in China
Japanese manufacturers are seeking to rapidly strengthen their position in the electric sector, in particular to avoid being overtaken in Europe, where combustion vehicles will be banned in 2035, but also in China.
“China is the world’s largest automotive market, but also one of the most competitive, with strong domestic brands and strict regulations that favour electric vehicles,” said Tatsuo Yoshida.
Nissan and Honda sales have fallen sharply in China after some of their factories closed there. Mitsubishi Motors, for its part, gave up producing in the country last year. In Japan, too, although the electric wave is weaker than elsewhere, the car market, historically dominated by Japanese brands, is now being shaken up by the American Tesla, the arrival of the Chinese electric champion BYD and the return of the South Korean Hyundai, again with electrified vehicles.
Source: BFM TV
