TOKYO – Honda Motor Co., in the midst of a radical corporate makeover, will team with Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp. on a new joint venture to develop and sell electric vehicles.
Honda and Sony said they will form a new company this year for “high value-added” battery electrics and commercialize them in conjunction with mobility services.
The partners want the new company to start sales in 2025.
Honda will contribute its expertise in body manufacturing and after-sales service, while Sony will provide its knowhow in imaging, sensing, telecommunications, networking and entertainment technologies.
The company will plan, design, develop and sell EVs but not operate an assembly plant. Honda will be responsible for manufacturing the first EV model, Honda and Sony said in a joint statement on Friday.
The vehicle will use a mobility service platform developed by Sony.
“Although Sony and Honda are companies that share many historical and cultural similarities, our areas of technological expertise are very different,” Mibe said in the statement.
“Therefore, I believe this alliance which brings together the strengths of our two companies offers great possibilities for the future of mobility,” he said.
The move comes as Honda tries to bolster its position in a rapidly changing automotive industry by dropping combustion and shifting to pure electric drivetrains by 2040.
Speaking in an interview with Automotive News late last year, CEO Toshihiro Mibe said forming new partnerships, even with technology companies outside the auto sector, would be key to the transformation.
Meanwhile, Sony has been eyeing its own entry into the auto field and unveiled its second concept vehicle in January at CES in Las Vegas to underscore its intention.
“We intend to build on our vision to ‘make the mobility space an emotional one,’ and contribute to the evolution of mobility centered around safety, entertainment and adaptability,” Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said, hinting at the company’s plant to leverage entertainment-on-the-go.
In January, Sony also created a company called Sony Mobility to handle its push into cars.
Sony’s automotive entry is expected to leverage its expertise in digital and software technology, while likely leaving the manufacturing of the car itself to an outside partner. It is a model often raised the best way for other technology companies, such as Apple, to crack the auto sector.
In January, Honda boss Mibe welcomed Sony into Japan’s auto industry, speaking as vice chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.
“You already see in Europe, the United States and China many new players coming into EV manufacturing. Sony is one of them,” Mibe said. “Having additional players in the industry brings about positive competition… A new entry like Sony will really revitalize the industry.”
As a mid-sized player on the global stage, Honda needs the help of friends. For a long time, it has circled wagons with General Motors on a range of projects, from hydrogen fuel cell technology to electric vehicles. But Mibe is actively courting new partners.
Mibe plans to phase out the company’s famed internal combustion engines by 2040 on the road to transforming Honda into a carbon-neutral power and mobility provider.
Japan’s No. 2 carmaker is planning to introduce its own dedicated electric vehicles platform, called e:Architecture and solid-state batteries in the second half of the 2020s. At the same time, it is developing autonomous vehicles, in part with GM’s Cruise, under a mobility-as-a-service enterprise.
And in September, Honda said it will branch into electric vertical take-off and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft with the aim commercialize the craft by 2030, and then break the bonds of earth all together by developing small, reusable rockets that can put satellites into low-earth orbit.
Honda confirmed this month it has already conducted combustion tests of its prototype rocket.
Another new focus area will be avatar robots – machines with arms, hands and fingers that motion-capture real human movement to “make virtual mobility possible.”
“This is a necessary decision,” Mibe told Automotive News, “to make sure Honda exists sustainably into the future.”