Honda Motors and Sony have announced Sony Honda Mobility in Japan. The new Joint Venture (JV) will produce new Electric Vehicles (EVs) to be sold in Japan and the USA.
This JV is important because:
1) Sony Honda Mobility directly looks to produce an EV with a direct-to-consumer subscription model (as we’ve written about before https://www.ekalore.com/post/mb-engineers-for-monthly-recurring-revenues) where the JV’s CEO signaled the importance of the longer-term relationship directly to the consumer as a goal
2) Plans are for the EV to be manufactured by 2025 for USA release with a Japan release in 2026 (acknowledged as a JV’s CEO as a compressed schedule)
3) Manufacturing is planned for the USA in Ohio (thus earning possible tax credits and other advantages in the USA domestic market)
4) The Sony-led software development assumes the EV will have at least a “Level 3 Autonomous Driving System” where the entertainment, information, and interactions with the data-driven features on the vehicle could be consumed without distracting the driver in appropriate situations. This is likely a development of the concept EV/SUV Sony has shown in the last 3 years.
5) Honda Motors is preparing multiple EV strategies to launch at different times in the next few model years. The Sony Honda launch is scheduled to take place by 2025. The Honda e-Architecture is scheduled for 2026. A Honda-GM Ultium-battery platform is to launch by 2027 (for North and South America, China).
Honda is taking multiple paths to EVs at different risk levels and technologies. The Sony Honda JV is clearly looking to a high-end luxury niche with a direct-to-consumer business model and data-driven features from EV-to-cloud. The risks associated with a compressed engineering cycle are present for the JV. The in-house e-Architecture is likely a more conservative lower-risk development cycle to provide a wide variety of platform support across many marketspaces and brands. The collaboration with GM is to provide an additional path for battery technologies and to stay relevant in the key markets for Honda.
EkaLore uses its Alien Invader construct to explain why overwhelming competitors seem to appear out of nowhere and take over entire marketplaces. Strange out-of-market takeovers by Tesla, Amazon, and even Samsung have been profiled at our blog site www.ekalore.com/alien-invaders.
Comments