Because the automotive {industry} braces for an unsure future, consolidation of massive 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 immediately, Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda addressed the looming consolidation dealing with two enormous 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 mentioned by way of an interpreter. “However even when that they had thought of that, it might undoubtedly be violating anti-monopoly legal guidelines. So possibly they could have thought of it, however determined to not due to that.”
Toyoda implied that the Japanese authorities—and maybe even different governments in locations the place these international firms function—may need balked at a union between two direct opponents who, for a very long time, have been related in measurement and scope. As an alternative, Nissan and Honda are set to start merger talks this yr, 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 dealing with the Japanese auto {industry} amid the push towards electrical and software-defined autos whereas China’s automotive sector races forward.
Photograph by: InsideEVs
Toyota Woven Metropolis Briefing, CES 2025
“If I knew what was going to occur from right here, I feel I might develop into very wealthy by making some investments,” Toyoda joked. “However we’re seeing an unclear future. We do not know what’s going to occur. It is fairly an fascinating, 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 completely different locations as they go into 2025.
Toyota stays handsomely worthwhile and the world’s prime automotive firm by gross sales quantity. However it’s removed from resistant to {industry} headwinds, particularly the place the rise of China’s auto {industry} is worried. Whereas it stays the dominant pressure in hybrid automobiles, Toyota is essentially thought of late to the sport with totally electrical automobiles, and it is shortly shedding market share in once-extremely worthwhile China. Toyota can also be scrambling to compensate for the software program entrance as increasingly gamers search to emulate Tesla, Rivian and the Chinese language automakers for his or her means to improve automobiles 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 earning profits and doing nicely in gross sales, however appears to be realizing it must catch up extra shortly on the high-tech EV entrance—therefore a sequence 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 earnings for years now, with executives warning final yr that it in all probability solely has 12-14 months to outlive with out a lifeline of some type. That lifeline is anticipated 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 in some unspecified time in the future as nicely.
In the meantime, Toyota appears to be forging nearer ties with just a few smaller firms it has numerous 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 automotive market because it was once. 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 automotive {industry}, in all probability prior to now we have been in competitors between automotive firms about how we are able to develop quantity,” he mentioned. “However in all probability that competitors, the character of the competitors, is altering. It is 1736214366 extra a contest about how the businesses can change the autos themselves—to alter the automobiles.”
As for the Nissan-Honda merger, Toyoda mentioned he is really trying ahead to what comes out of it—and the way to compete in opposition to these automobiles.
“For me, it is fairly thrilling, as a result of I am trying ahead to [seeing] how they will cooperate between one another and the way they will develop extra aggressive merchandise,” Toyoda mentioned. “If these sorts of thrilling merchandise, aggressive merchandise, come out [of this merger], I feel it is a good factor for the competitors not solely in Japan however for the world.”
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