Mitsubishi Motors of Japan disclosed over the weekend that it planned to form an auto alliance with Honda Motor and Nissan Motor whereby, the sales value of the alliance would be in of excess of 8 million vehicles annually as the Nikkei Business Daily disclosed.
Nissan which has a controlling interest in Mitsubishi Motors at 34% will sit down with Honda and Mitsubishi to find details of the deal. The idea behind this alliance is to form a set standard for software that is incorporated in vehicles, which has become a core function in today’s automobiles as reported by Nikkei.
An official from Mitsubishi Motors said the company had no comment on the report, while Nissan and Honda officials could not be reached for comments at the time of going to press.
This newcomer at a time when Nissan Motor, Japan’s third-largest automaker is found to be losing its grounds in its key markets – the US and China which accounted for over 50 percent of its global sales in the last fiscal year. On Thursday, Nissan again came up with a lower annual projection following crass selling discounts in the U. S. that reduced its first-quarter operating profits to a stalk.
It appears that Japan’s automakers will use collaborations to reduce costs and among other things, deal with competition in the new electric vehicle (EV) market dominated by companies such as BYD from China and Tesla. In China where formerly the Japanese car brands were popular the local competitors are supplying cheap cars with good specifications.
In January this year, Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. said that the two carmakers were studying a possible partnership or alliance to manufacture and supply EVs.
parts in the belief that the electric vehicle market is set to expand soon all over the world. It will also open a new chapter in their fight to cope up with the rapidly emerging pace of electrified vehicle transformation with Mitsubishi Motors.
