The jump to electric cars is shaking the foundations of the automotive industry, and Japan, one of its main birthplaces, is feeling it fully. According to the Japanese media Nikkei, Honda and Nissan, the second and third manufacturers in the Japanese market and the eighth and ninth in the worldhave begun talks to merge, with the intention of signing a memorandum of understanding in the coming days, as they had already indicated at the beginning of the year.
The objective of the merger would be to be able to compete in the electric car market, the increasingly near future of the sector, and in which Chinese firms, together with the American Tesla, have an increasingly greater advantage over their traditional competitors. . According to Nikkei information, the plan would be create a joint arrayas happened with Iberia and British Airways, which keep both brands separate but allow processes and designs to be unified.
According to CNBC, the agreement would leave the door open for Mitsubishi will later joina firm in which Nissan owns 24% of its shares and which participates in Nissan’s alliance with the French Renault. At the moment, it is not known if the merger would mean expanding this alliance with the entry of Honda, or if it would lead to its breakup, after several years of anxiety following the escape from Japan of its main architect, Carlos Ghosn.
The two firms produced 7.5 million vehicles in 2023, so the merger would place them in third position on the world podiumonly behind Toyota and Volkswagen, and just ahead of Hyundai. The key is that its objective is to advance in the electric vehicle sector, which barely accounted for 2.3% of Nissan’s sales in the US in 2023. Honda’s figures are somewhat better, but both are behind, for For example, the sales of the Chinese BYD. Mitsubishi, for its part, barely manufactured 245,000 cars in 2023
The automotive sector is experiencing a stage of global crisis due to the imminent jump to new types of vehicles. The historical combustion giants continue to sell at a good pace, but the upcoming bans on gasoline engines and the climate change crisis make a model change imminent. And China has arrived first in this new market, without the burden of having to convert or close combustion factories that do not exist in the Asian giant: In 2023 it will account for 70% of all electric car salesproducing 9.5 million units, and that year, its exports increased by 70% compared to 2022, reaching $34.1 billion.
In Europe, Volkswagen is the main loser: the German firm plans close factories in its native Germany for the first time in 87 years of historywhich has triggered all the alarms. For this reason, the EU faces an unprecedented economic conflict with China: imposing tariffs on all electric cars from that country, exposing itself to sanctions and causing more inflation; or let one of the main European industries sink before a stronger rival.
#battle #electric #cars #preparing #megamerger #Honda #Nissan #negotiate #join
