Nissan and Honda plan to enter into negotiations for a merger to better compete in the rapidly changing automotive industry, the Nikkei newspaper reported.
That sounds like a disaster for Honda. Nissan doesn’t hardly have anything to offer except supply/sales volume. Honda beats them on engine tech, transmission tech, chassis tech, basically everything. Honda has lots to lose by taking on their mess, and Nissan doesn’t.
I don’t know about in Japan, but in the US, Nissan has a sub-$30k EV with the Leaf and Honda does not. So that would be worth something to them considering California is trying to phase out ICE cars.
That’s still only a single model that is <8% of Nissan’s already abysmal US sales volume. Nissan’s massive pile of garbage that fills up the rest of portfolio (and institutional problems behind the scenes) is absolutely NOT worth dealing with for the technology in a single model like that, even if it is “necessary” to offer to ensure compliance eith wishy washy regulatory soon-to-be’s. They would be much better off clean-slating their own, EV tech is significantly easier to develop compared to new ICE designs and if anyone is capable of that, it’s Honda.
It is a big, untapped market but it’s not a big market for the Leaf. Tesla sold 3x more Model 3 in the last year alone than Nissan has sold in the entire 14 year production run of the Leaf. It’s a hot mess.
I absolutely agree with you there. For consumer space this merger doesn’t make sense for Honda. For Nissan share holder, this is fantastic… Only thing I can think of is Nissan has some EV tech that Honda could use but that’s quite the stretch. Nissan actually jumped into EV relatively early but they didn’t iterate on it quickly enough to matter. Honda has been dragging their feet on EV and they both completely missed the boat on bridge tech offering like plug in hybrid. This merger isn’t going to do anything to fix that.
Since Nissan is now a low end brand and Honda is moving more towards premium side perhaps being together would cover the market segments better. The merger absolutely does nothing for the high end market though.
The one thing that I don’t know anything about is the commercial market domestically in Japan. Perhaps Nissan has good market share which Honda could gain from this merger. Maybe someone could chime in on this.
That sounds like a disaster for Honda. Nissan doesn’t hardly have anything to offer except supply/sales volume. Honda beats them on engine tech, transmission tech, chassis tech, basically everything. Honda has lots to lose by taking on their mess, and Nissan doesn’t.
I don’t know about in Japan, but in the US, Nissan has a sub-$30k EV with the Leaf and Honda does not. So that would be worth something to them considering California is trying to phase out ICE cars.
https://insideevs.com/news/744407/ev-california-gas-car-sales-ban-2035/
That’s still only a single model that is <8% of Nissan’s already abysmal US sales volume. Nissan’s massive pile of garbage that fills up the rest of portfolio (and institutional problems behind the scenes) is absolutely NOT worth dealing with for the technology in a single model like that, even if it is “necessary” to offer to ensure compliance eith wishy washy regulatory soon-to-be’s. They would be much better off clean-slating their own, EV tech is significantly easier to develop compared to new ICE designs and if anyone is capable of that, it’s Honda.
It’s a single model and virtually the only model of EV less affluent Americans can afford. That’s a huge market.
It is a big, untapped market but it’s not a big market for the Leaf. Tesla sold 3x more Model 3 in the last year alone than Nissan has sold in the entire 14 year production run of the Leaf. It’s a hot mess.
The Model 3 is over $40,000. It’s selling more because Americans are barely even aware cheaper EVs exist.
I absolutely agree with you there. For consumer space this merger doesn’t make sense for Honda. For Nissan share holder, this is fantastic… Only thing I can think of is Nissan has some EV tech that Honda could use but that’s quite the stretch. Nissan actually jumped into EV relatively early but they didn’t iterate on it quickly enough to matter. Honda has been dragging their feet on EV and they both completely missed the boat on bridge tech offering like plug in hybrid. This merger isn’t going to do anything to fix that.
Since Nissan is now a low end brand and Honda is moving more towards premium side perhaps being together would cover the market segments better. The merger absolutely does nothing for the high end market though.
The one thing that I don’t know anything about is the commercial market domestically in Japan. Perhaps Nissan has good market share which Honda could gain from this merger. Maybe someone could chime in on this.
Public perception is also a factor. Even seeing collaborated cars like their EV Chevy thing takes away from Honda’s perception of reliability.