Because the automotive {industry} braces for an unsure future, consolidation of huge gamers who had been as soon as vicious rivals is all however inevitable. But earlier than a battered and diminished Nissan sought out a associate to merge with, its greatest historic competitor Toyota was by no means on the menu.
Talking at CES 2025 in Las Vegas at this time, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda addressed the looming consolidation dealing with two large components of the Japanese auto {industry}: Honda and Nissan. However he confirmed that his firm wasn’t concerned in such talks.
“[Nissan] didn’t method Toyota about any mergers,” Toyoda mentioned by way of an interpreter. “However even when that they had thought-about that, it will undoubtedly be violating anti-monopoly legal guidelines. So perhaps they may have thought-about it, however determined to not due to that.”
Toyoda implied that the Japanese authorities—and maybe even different governments in locations the place these international corporations function—may need balked at a union between two direct rivals who, for a very long time, had been comparable in measurement and scope. As a substitute, Nissan and Honda are set to start merger talks this yr, with a mutual objective of mixing by late summer season 2026.
Toyoda got here to CES to advertise Woven Metropolis, the automaker’s upcoming live-in startup incubator located on the base of Mount Fuji in Japan. However the chairman, who served for greater than a decade because the CEO of the corporate his grandfather based, additionally weighed in on the consolidation wave dealing with the Japanese auto {industry} amid the push towards electrical and software-defined autos whereas China’s automobile sector races forward.
Picture by: InsideEVs
Toyota Woven Metropolis Briefing, CES 2025
“If I knew what was going to occur from right here, I believe I would change into very wealthy by making some investments,” Toyoda joked. “However we’re seeing an unclear future. We do not know what’s going to occur. It is fairly an attention-grabbing, difficult period to be in administration.”
InsideEVs has requested a remark from Nissan. We’ll replace this story if we get one.
Japan’s greatest automakers all discover themselves in very completely different locations as they go into 2025.
Toyota stays handsomely worthwhile and the world’s prime automobile firm by gross sales quantity. Nevertheless it’s removed from proof against {industry} headwinds, particularly the place the rise of China’s auto {industry} is worried. Whereas it stays the dominant pressure in hybrid vehicles, Toyota is basically thought-about late to the sport with absolutely electrical vehicles, and it is shortly dropping market share in once-extremely worthwhile China. Toyota can be scrambling to atone for the software program entrance as increasingly gamers search to emulate Tesla, Rivian and the Chinese language automakers for his or her potential to improve vehicles with new tech options over time and cost drivers for that privilege.
Picture by: Nissan
Honda Nissan Mitsubishi Partnership
In the meantime, Honda can be making a living and doing effectively in gross sales, however appears to be realizing it must catch up extra shortly on the high-tech EV entrance—therefore a collection of bulletins about new electrical fashions and upcoming tech later this week at CES. However whereas Nissan was lengthy Japan’s no. 2 automaker, it has sagged in gross sales and earnings for years now, with executives warning final yr that it in all probability solely has 12-14 months to outlive with out a lifeline of some type. That lifeline is anticipated to be Honda now in a deliberate union that can create the world’s third-largest automaker by quantity. Mitsubishi can be in talks with the 2 and plenty of industry-watchers imagine it is more likely to be a part of sooner or later as effectively.
In the meantime, Toyota appears to be forging nearer ties with a couple of smaller corporations it has varied partnerships with already: Subaru, Mazda and Suzuki. However Toyoda warned that the sport is not about duking it out with different gamers for percentages of the identical automobile market because it was once. Now, it is much less about incremental change and extra about whole transformation.
“For Toyota, what I can say is that once we take into consideration the automobile {industry}, in all probability prior to now we had been in competitors between automobile corporations about how we will develop quantity,” he mentioned. “However in all probability that competitors, the character of the competitors, is altering. It is 1736213324 extra a contest about how the businesses can change the autos themselves—to alter the vehicles.”
As for the Nissan-Honda merger, Toyoda mentioned he is truly wanting ahead to what comes out of it—and the best way to compete towards these vehicles.
“For me, it is fairly thrilling, as a result of I am wanting ahead to [seeing] how they will cooperate between one another and the way they will develop extra aggressive merchandise,” Toyoda mentioned. “If these sorts of thrilling merchandise, aggressive merchandise, come out [of this merger], I believe it is a good factor for the competitors not solely in Japan however for the world.”
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