AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)11/04 Report--

On November 4, according to several media reports, Mitsubishi and Nissan have agreed to set up a joint venture to provide services related to self-driving and the use of electric vehicle batteries as batteries. According to the report, the new company will be established in March 2025 and will be equally owned by the two companies.

In March this year, Mitsubishi and Nissan signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation, which will jointly discuss the new business of next-generation mobile travel services and energy-related application services for electric vehicles. The two sides will focus on autopilot testing, the development of energy management systems, and the full use of renewable energy.

Judging from the latest news, the joint venture will not be officially established until March 2025, when the two sides will conduct business, and the automotive industry will continue to pay attention.

It is worth mentioning that this is not the first cooperation between Japanese manufacturers. In the middle of last month, there were also media reports that Toyota, Honda and Nissan had reached a cooperation strategy to jointly develop car software, and the three car companies planned to unify the standards of the vehicle control system, covering the opening and closing of doors and windows, as well as the operation of wipers. Earlier in March, Nissan and Honda announced a memorandum of understanding to cooperate fully on the electric vehicle business, and in May, the heads of Toyota, Mazda and Subaru pledged to continue to invest in internal combustion engine technology. and by combining the internal combustion engine with electric technology to help the internal combustion engine decarbonization. In addition, in the field of electrification, Mazda, Suzuki and Subaru all have cooperative relations with Toyota to jointly develop electric vehicles with the help of their technology.

Then, in July, Mitsubishi announced that it had joined the Honda-Nissan alliance, and the three companies planned to standardize the on-board software that controls cars. In August, Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi signed a memorandum of strategic cooperation. The three companies will work together on pure electric vehicles and intelligence to share research and development costs to counter competition from Chinese companies and accelerate carbon neutralization.

At present, the sales sources of Japanese brands, including Toyota, still rely on fuel models, but with the weakening of the fuel vehicle market and the arrival of the era of new energy vehicles, the technical advantages and brand characteristics accumulated during the fuel vehicle period are becoming more and more difficult to maintain. In addition, with the rapid development of electric vehicles and smart driving technology, including Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda and other Japanese automakers are generally facing tremendous pressure of transformation. In the outside world, whether it is the cooperation between Mitsubishi and Nissan, or the joint cooperation between Toyota, Honda and Nissan, the choice of cooperation is to reduce costs and cope with the pressure of industry change and transformation. In fact, Japanese manufacturers "keeping warm together" also reveals to some extent the pains and anxieties that Japanese manufacturers are facing in the process of transformation.

From April to September 2024, global production by Japan's top eight automakers was 11.8783 million vehicles, down 6.0 percent from a year earlier, the first year-on-year decline in production in the same period since 2020, Kyodo News reported. Of this total, Toyota fell 7.0 per cent year-on-year to 4.705 million, Honda 8.1 per cent to 1.8174 million and Nissan 7.8 per cent to 1.5325 million.

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