Japanese rivals Nissan and Honda to share electric vehicle components…

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese automakers Nissan and Honda announced plans to share electric vehicle components such as batteries, as well as joint research on autonomous driving software.

A third Japanese manufacturer, Mitsubishi Motors Corp., has joined the Nissan-Honda partnership, sharing the view that speed and size are key to responding to the rapid changes in the auto industry driven by electrification.

A preliminary agreement between Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. was announced in March.

After 100 days of talks, company executives showed a sense of urgency. Japanese carmakers have dominated the gasoline-powered era in recent decades but have fallen behind powerful new players in green cars, including Tesla of the U.S. and China’s BYD.

“Companies that don’t adapt to change won’t survive,” said Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe. “If we try to do everything ourselves, we won’t catch up.”

Nissan and Honda will use the same batteries and apply the same specifications for motors and inverters in the axles of their electric vehicles, company officials said.

Joining forces in what Mibe and his Nissan counterpart, Makoto Uchida, have repeatedly called “making friends” to achieve economies of scale, the companies are planning more strategic investments in technology and seeking to cut costs by increasing volume.

Each company will continue to produce and offer its own models. They will, however, share resources in areas such as components and software development, where “making connections” will be a plus, Mibe and Uchida told reporters.

They declined to say whether the friendship would include joint ownership of capital, but said it could be possible.

The two companies also agreed to make their model lines “mutually complementary” across global markets, including both internal combustion engine and electric vehicles. Details on that are being worked out, the companies said.

Honda and Nissan will also collaborate on energy services in Japan. Mitsubishi will join as a third member, according to Thursday’s announcements.

Toyota Motor Corp., Japan’s largest automaker, is not part of the three-way collaboration.

Uchida said that while the corporate cultures of Honda and Nissan are very different, further discussions about the collaboration revealed that their engineers and other field workers have a lot in common.

“Given our size, speed is key,” he added.

Uchida and Mibe have repeatedly stressed the importance of speed, openly admitting that BYD is moving very quickly but said they still have time to catch up and stay in the game.

“Working together, we will show that one plus one is better than two,” Uchida said.

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Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama