Sony Honda Mobility: The world's newest car company

The partnership has become official, Honda and Sony will be producing electric vehicles (EVs) and selling them by 2025. The new business will be called Sony Honda Mobility Inc. and will b headed by appointed chairman and CEO Honda executive Yasuhide Mizuno, and new COO Sony’s EVP Izumi Kawanishi. Each company will have an equal 50% share. 

The Sony Honda Mobility Inc. will utilize Honda’s cutting-edge environmental and safety technologies, mobility development capabilities, vehicle body manufacturing, and after-sales management experience. Meanwhile, Sony will contribute to the imaging, sensing, telecommunication, network, and entertainment technologies.  

With a budget of JPY 10 billion, the new company intends to accelerate development and lead the evolution of a new breed of EVs. This may also benefit Honda’s partnership with GM as they may use this opportunity to grab a piece of the EV market in the US. So far, the Japanese automaker's only EV is the small Honda E, while Sony previewed the Vision-S 02 EV SUV concept which uses the Vision-S platform. 

Honda is utilizing their GM partnership (creating the Ultium battery technology) to offer a fully electric lineup by 2040. These batteries are set to power Honda and Acura SUVs by 2024. As reported earlier, Honda will also invest 40 billion USD and is posed to launch 30 new EVs by 2030.  

It isn't clear yet where the new company will fall in the grand scheme of things but one thing is for sure, tomorrow is looking bright for Honda as a whole. Both them and Sony are primed to make the best out of this deal and are set to propel the car industry further with new technologies and innovations.