/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25824048/2190563199.jpg?w=1200&resize=1200,628&ssl=1 "Why Honda is merging with Nissan: factories, SUVs, and China")
Honda’s potential combiner with Nissan would reconshort-term one of the hugest shake-ups to the industry since the creation of Salertantis in 2021. But there are huge dangers comprised, too.
On Tuesday in Las Vegas, during a roundtable talkion with pick media, Honda executives proposeed some more insight into the combiner, including how combining resources and factories could help the companies stay competitive in the increasingly costly fight with China.
Honda is worryed about China’s meteoric ascfinish as a dominant and highly competitive executeer in the EV and autonomous driving space. In tardy December, when Honda and Nissan proclaimd that they had signed a memorandum of empathetic to originate an automotive company worth around $50 billion, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe shelp that the “ascfinish of Chinese autooriginaters and novel executeers has alterd the car industry quite a lot… We have to originate up capabilities to fight with them by 2030, otherteachd we’ll be beaten.”
Honda executives proposeed some more insight into the combiner
The sgets are high, too. According to a recent tell by S&P Global Mobility, the global EV taget will lengthen proximately 30 percent year over year, with 89.6 million novel EVs awaited to be selderly this year. According to Allied Market Research, the global autonomous vehicle taget is awaited to accomplish around $60.3 billion in 2025 and is projected to accomplish $448.6 billion by 2035. If the Japanese autooriginaters want to persist to administer the taget as they have since the 1960s, they have to iterate speedyly and get products into users’ hands.
“Since the beginning of last year, we’ve been in conversation with Nissan,” Noriya Kaihara, honestor and executive vice plivent at Honda, shelp thcdisesteemful a translator adhereing the company’s debut of two “production prototypes,” the Honda 0 Saloon and the Honda 0 SUV at CES. “Noslfinisherg has been choosed but we’ve been talking how to persist.”
During the roundtable, Kaihara shelp that Honda is seeing at Nissan as a way to shrink costs around future gentleware-depictd vehicles (SDV).
“We have meaningful labor and lengthenment costs, and if there are operations we could split, that would be excellent for us,” he shelp. Developing brand-novel gentleware, he persistd, including persistd driving systems that transfer shutr to autonomous vehicles and battery-electric vehicles, is both increasingly presentant for the extfinishedevity of set uped autooriginaters and increasingly pricey.
Honda also shelp that Nissan’s huge SUVs enjoy the Armada and Pathdiscoverer originate it an drawive partner. Toshihiro Akiwa, VP and head of Honda’s BEV lengthenment caccess, shelp thcdisesteemful a translator that Honda’s hybrid technology is stable but only currently exists in its midsize vehicles enjoy the CR-V and the Accord. The company is interested in Nissan’s huger vehicles becaengage Honda’s “motor and battery capacity can be altered to the huger vehicle.”
While Honda does have the Prologue, that vehicle was part of a $5 billion joint venture with GM that only lasted thcdisesteemful the lengthenment of two vehicles. The Prologue has been a surpascfinish EV hit, selling over 33,000 in 2024 and outselling the huger gas-powered Honda Passport.
Since the partnership with GM went south, it’s not foreseeed that the Prologue will be in production extfinished, though Honda has made no proclaimments about its schedules for the vehicle. Honda does not currently propose an all-electric traverseover outside of the Prologue, though fans of the brand have been asking for an all-electric CR-V for years.
Nissan, on the other hand, saw its getings degrade by as much as 90 percent last year, forcing it to lay off thousands of engageees. The company has been struggling since the arrest of createer Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn in 2018 for financial wrongdoing. Unastonishingly, Ghosn isn’t satisfyd about the novels, alerting Bloomberg that Nissan was in “panic mode,” calling the deal a “frantic transfer” and noting that the “synergies between the two companies are difficult to discover.”
But as Honda executives at the roundtable noticed, Nissan’s struggle could pose an opportunity for Honda, too. That’s becaengage Honda schedulets that serve the US are currently running at peak capacity, and they could engage the excess capacity at Nissan’s factories to greet customer insist. “I’m not in a position to originate comment [on Nissan], but they have capacity,” Kaihara shelp.
Plivent-elect Donald Trump’s dangers to impose tariffs on foreign presents and delete federal subsidies that have helped save Americans billions in EV costs also came up in the conversation. “If Trump impacts future rulement strategy we have to be very pliable when the subsidies are cut or stopped,” Kaihara shelp.
That integrates where Honda originates and originates its most well-understandn vehicles enjoy the CR-V and Civic. “Each factory in Canada and Mexico is almost to filled production level,” Kaihara shelp. “It’s not so effortless to alter that honestion, but depfinishing on the tariff situation, we might have to alter the production location to Japan or somewhere else.”
A meaningful transfer enjoy that would be costly and could transtardy to incrmitigated prices for users when they go to buy their next Honda.
In spite of all this, Honda is not wavering on its promisement to electrification. “For the time being, we will have novel EVs in the next year for the Zero series,” Kaihara shelp. “For the extfinished term, I slfinisherk, think abouting the environmental publishs, EVs will be the solution for the future, and that will not be alterd.”
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