Because the automotive {industry} braces for an unsure future, consolidation of huge gamers who have been as soon as vicious opponents is all however inevitable. But earlier than a battered and diminished Nissan sought out a companion to merge with, its greatest historic competitor Toyota was by no means on the menu.
Talking at CES 2025 in Las Vegas at the moment, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda addressed the looming consolidation going through two big elements of the Japanese auto {industry}: Honda and Nissan. However he confirmed that his firm wasn’t concerned in such talks.
“[Nissan] didn’t strategy Toyota about any mergers,” Toyoda stated by an interpreter. “However even when they’d thought of that, it might positively be violating anti-monopoly legal guidelines. So perhaps they may have thought of 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—might need balked at a union between two direct opponents who, for a very long time, have been related in measurement and scope. As a substitute, Nissan and Honda are set to start merger talks this yr, with a mutual aim 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 going through the Japanese auto {industry} amid the push towards electrical and software-defined automobiles whereas China’s automotive 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 might develop 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 fascinating, difficult period to be in administration.”
InsideEVs has requested a remark from Nissan. We are going to replace this story if we get one.
Japan’s greatest automakers all discover themselves in very totally different locations as they go into 2025.
Toyota stays handsomely worthwhile and the world’s prime automotive firm by gross sales quantity. But it surely’s removed from proof against {industry} headwinds, particularly the place the rise of China’s auto {industry} is worried. Whereas it stays the dominant power in hybrid automobiles, Toyota is basically thought of late to the sport with absolutely electrical automobiles, and it is shortly dropping market share in once-extremely worthwhile China. Toyota can also be scrambling to compensate for the software program entrance as an increasing number of gamers search to emulate Tesla, Rivian and the Chinese language automakers for his or her capability to improve automobiles with new tech options over time and cost drivers for that privilege.
Picture by: Nissan
Honda Nissan Mitsubishi Partnership
In the meantime, Honda can also be getting cash 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 most likely solely has 12-14 months to outlive and not using a lifeline of some kind. That lifeline is predicted to be Honda now in a deliberate union that may create the world’s third-largest automaker by quantity. Mitsubishi can also be in talks with the 2 and plenty of industry-watchers consider it is prone to be part of sooner or later as effectively.
In the meantime, Toyota appears to be forging nearer ties with just a few 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 automotive market because it was once. Now, it is much less about incremental change and extra about complete transformation.
“For Toyota, what I can say is that after we take into consideration the automotive {industry}, most likely prior to now we have been in competitors between automotive corporations about how we will develop quantity,” he stated. “However most likely that competitors, the character of the competitors, is altering. It is 1736214646 extra a contest about how the businesses can change the automobiles themselves—to vary the automobiles.”
As for the Nissan-Honda merger, Toyoda stated he is really trying ahead to what comes out of it—and the best way to compete in opposition to these automobiles.
“For me, it is fairly thrilling, as a result of I am trying ahead to [seeing] how they will cooperate between one another and the way they will develop extra aggressive merchandise,” Toyoda stated. “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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