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 accomplice to merge with, its largest historic competitor Toyota was by no means on the menu.
Talking at CES 2025 in Las Vegas in the present day, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda addressed the looming consolidation going through two large elements 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 stated by way of an interpreter. “However even when they’d thought of that, it might positively be violating anti-monopoly legal guidelines. So perhaps they could have thought of it, however determined to not due to that.”
Toyoda implied that the Japanese authorities—and even perhaps different governments in locations the place these international firms function—might need balked at a union between two direct opponents who, for a very long time, have been comparable in dimension and scope. As a substitute, Nissan and Honda are set to start merger talks this 12 months, with a mutual aim of mixing by late summer time 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 automobile sector races forward.
Photograph by: InsideEVs
Toyota Woven Metropolis Briefing, CES 2025
“If I knew what was going to occur from right here, I believe I might grow to be very wealthy by making some investments,” Toyoda joked. “However we’re seeing an unclear future. We do not know what is going to occur. It is fairly an attention-grabbing, 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 largest automakers all discover themselves in very totally different locations as they go into 2025.
Toyota stays handsomely worthwhile and the world’s prime automobile firm by gross sales quantity. However it’s removed from proof against {industry} headwinds, particularly the place the rise of China’s auto {industry} is anxious. Whereas it stays the dominant power in hybrid vehicles, Toyota is basically thought of late to the sport with absolutely electrical vehicles, and it is shortly dropping market share in once-extremely worthwhile China. Toyota can also be scrambling to make amends for the software program entrance as increasingly more gamers search to emulate Tesla, Rivian and the Chinese language automakers for his or her skill to improve vehicles with new tech options over time and cost drivers for that privilege.
Photograph by: Nissan
Honda Nissan Mitsubishi Partnership
In the meantime, Honda can also be being profitable 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 income for years now, with executives warning final 12 months that it most likely solely has 12-14 months to outlive with out a lifeline of some kind. That lifeline is predicted to be Honda now in a deliberate union that can create the world’s third-largest automaker by quantity. Mitsubishi can also be in talks with the 2 and lots of industry-watchers imagine it is more likely to be part of sooner or later as effectively.
In the meantime, Toyota appears to be forging nearer ties with a couple of smaller firms 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. Now, it is much less about incremental change and extra about complete transformation.
“For Toyota, what I can say is that once we take into consideration the automobile {industry}, most likely prior to now we have been in competitors between automobile firms about how we will develop quantity,” he stated. “However most likely that competitors, the character of the competitors, is altering. It is 1736215389 extra a contest about how the businesses can change the automobiles themselves—to vary the vehicles.”
As for the Nissan-Honda merger, Toyoda stated he is really trying ahead to what comes out of it—and find out how to compete in opposition to these vehicles.
“For me, it is fairly thrilling, as a result of I am trying ahead to [seeing] how they’ll cooperate between one another and the way they’ll 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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