AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)06/16 Report--

On June 16, the two Japanese giants "Sony Group" and "Honda Motor" announced the formal signing of a cooperation agreement to jointly form a joint venture company "Sony Honda Mobility". The new joint venture company is located in Tokyo, Japan, with a registered capital of 10 billion yen, with 50% of the shares of each side, with Mizuno Mizuno, a former Honda China minister, as chairman and CEO, and Sony Mobile President and CEO Kawanishi Izumi as joint venture president and COO.

It is understood that the business involved in the joint venture includes the sale of electric vehicles and mobile services. The company will start operation within this year and start selling electric vehicles and providing travel services in 2025. Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony's chairman, president and chief executive, revealed that Sony's joint venture with Honda could operate independently through public fundraising, while the new car would use technology from PS5. "We agree that it is better to make the joint venture independent in the long run, rather than putting it under Sony or Honda," Kenichiro Yoshida said in an interview on June 6. " Asked about the possibility of the joint venture IPO or selling shares to other companies, Mr. Yoshida said: "it's possible."

As early as January this year, Sony decided to join the ranks of car building. At that time, Sony's official website announced a new concept SUV called VISION-S 02. At the 2022CES conference, it showed the new prototype of the second generation VISION-S concept electric vehicle and the existing Sony VISION-S sedan released at CES last year. Kenichiro Yoshida also announced that Sony Group will set up a new department, Sony Mobile (Sony Mobility Inc). After its establishment, it mainly focuses on the commercialization of electric vehicles.

Then, on March 4, Sony Group and Honda jointly announced that they had basically reached an agreement on pure electric vehicle business cooperation, and the two sides would jointly fund the establishment of a new company to develop pure electric vehicles, which would be sold in 2025. This news has aroused great attention in the industry after the news was released.

According to the concern of the automobile industry, after the cooperation between the two sides, Sony is mainly responsible for developing car software and in-car entertainment systems and providing a travel service platform, while Honda focuses on production and sales. Sony's president has said that areas such as sensors, communications and entertainment systems needed for pure electric vehicles are Sony's strengths, and this is a good opportunity for Sony to redefine cars. In fact, however, Honda's alliance with Sony was first proposed by Honda.

Honda, a veteran Japanese automaker, has taken the initiative to seek a partnership with Sony, in part because Honda confirmed in April last year that it would stop selling all fuel vehicles in 2040, when Honda would no longer sell fuel vehicles. On the other hand, the current electric transformation has become the major trend of the future development of traditional car companies, and the rapid transformation to the field of electric vehicles is the top priority of Honda after the development, but Honda's performance in the field of new energy vehicles is not outstanding. At present, in the electric field of Honda, only Honda e with Europe as the main battlefield and the domestic pure electric version of HR-V e:NS1 are extremely surging. Honda China Minister Katsushi Inoue said that he wants to strive to sell 800000 pure electric vehicles by 2030, and pointed out: "if we can not win the competition in China, which is promoting electrification, it will be eliminated by the world." We will change all areas, and the outcome will be decided in the next five years. In this case, Honda's initiative to seek cooperation with Sony is, in a sense, a new attempt by traditional car companies to cope with the great changes in the industry. Sony may be able to give it a helping hand, but the cooperative models will not be sold until 2025, the market is rapidly changing, and no one knows how the market will change when 2025 comes.

As for Sony, although not from the auto industry, but Sony's move to build a car is not sudden. In the past two years, Sony has quietly laid out the automobile industry, and has made a certain accumulation. after deciding to join the automobile industry, if an established car company can better solve the problems of vehicle manufacturing and sales, why not.

As a world-famous large-scale comprehensive multinational enterprise group, Sony is the pioneer of portable digital products in the world, with its main business in many fields, such as audio-visual, electronic games, communication products and information technology. it is also one of the largest electronic product manufacturers in the world, one of the three giants of the world video game industry, and one of the six major Hollywood film companies in the United States. As a technology company, Sony's layout of the automotive sector is not unprepared. As early as January 2020, Sony officially released its first pure electric concept model, VISION-S. Earlier, Sony also denied building a car. On January 5 this year, Sony suddenly released a new concept SUV called VISION-S 02, and especially emphasized that safety has always been its top priority. Therefore, the VISION-S 02 model deployed many safety-related vehicle sensors, such as 40 sensors installed inside and outside the car. It can surround the car body 360 degrees and is mainly used to monitor safety conditions. From this point of view, Sony's entry into the auto industry is more of a deliberate choice.

But now it is not strange for non-traditional car companies such as technology enterprises to enter the automobile industry. Previously, including Apple, Baidu, Ali, Xiaomi, oppo and Foxconn, they all joined the ranks of car building in different forms. The automobile industry is concerned that these companies are competing to build cars in the market. Now car production is becoming more and more electric and intelligent, with the passage of time. The future will also be the major trend of automobile development, under this condition, it is expected that more and more non-traditional automobile enterprises such as technology enterprises will enter the automobile field. Of course, everything has its advantages and disadvantages, and some people in the industry believe that with the entry of non-traditional automobile enterprises such as science and technology enterprises into the automobile industry, the original automobile division of labor system and industrial structure will be impacted, and the competition in the automobile market will become more and more fierce.

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