Nissan and Honda have similar problems and they intend to solve them together. Today it was officially announced that Nissan and Honda are preparing to enter into a strategic partnership in a number of promising areas, not just in the electric vehicle segment.
At the moment, the upcoming partnership between Nissan and Honda is at the stage of a memorandum of understanding, a concrete deal is still far away, but the companies will try to conclude it quickly enough, since time is running out, competitors are pressing and they need to, as they say, move. The format of the future partnership has not yet been determined; it could be an alliance in the spirit of Ford and Volkswagen without an exchange of assets, or closer integration with cross-share ownership, as in the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance.
Let us recall that the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance was relaunched last year after several years of stupor caused by the scandalous arrest in 2018 of its chief architect Carlos Ghosn. After the relaunch, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance became largely formal: Renault and Nissan continue to cooperate, mainly in the European market, but their long-term plans are becoming increasingly independent from each other. Last summer, Renault launched a global engine joint venture with Geely, and in the fall of the same year, it became known that the French company had abandoned joint purchases with Nissan and Mitsubishi.
In turn, Honda’s alliance with General Motors, concluded in 2020, began to stall last year: the partners abandoned plans to jointly produce affordable electric vehicles and de-factored long-term cooperation; Honda and GM most likely will not have new joint models will be.
Discord with old partners pushed Nissan and Honda into each other's arms. The two Japanese companies are also united by the fact that they both slept through the electric car race in the global auto industry, which began in the middle of the last decade after the scandalous Volkswagen Dieselgate. Attempts by Nissan and Honda to release successful new-wave electric vehicles were unsuccessful, as evidenced by weak sales of the Nissan Ariya crossover and Honda e hatchback.
Fortunately for Nissan and Honda, the global car market has seen a slowdown in demand for electric vehicles since last year, but both companies still aim to become carbon neutral by 2050, so electric vehicles remain their focus. The alliance between Nissan and Honda is being started mainly with the expectation of jointly releasing new models of electric vehicles, but not only for this: joint procurement of components, joint development of a wide range of software, hybrid and hydrogen cars are also on the agenda.
Nissan Motor CEO Makoto Ushida (left) and Honda Motor CEO Toshihiro Mibe (right)
Another important factor contributing to the potential success of the Nissan partnership and Honda have close corporate cultures, it will be easier to come to an agreement with each other than with American and European partners.
Let us add that Honda has a joint automobile company with Sony under the Afeela brand , and Nissan has recently been cited by business media as a prime candidate for a partnership with struggling US electric vehicle startup Fisker, but the partnership has not been officially confirmed at this time.