Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan are discussing a merger with Mitsubishi Motors in an effort to tackle fierce global competition in electric vehicles, the companies said in a statement released Monday after an emergency news conference.
Honda and Nissan, Japan’s second and third largest automakers, plan to complete negotiations on a holding company starting in August 2026 by June 2025, the statement said.
Mitsubishi Motors, which is partly owned by Nissan, must decide at the end of January whether to participate in a merger.
If the three-way merger goes through, the group would become the world’s third-largest carmaker, with combined annual sales of more than 8 million vehicles, rivaling Japanese company Toyota and Germany’s Volkswagen.
The companies said they want to pool their resources to better compete with U.S. automaker Tesla and Chinese electric vehicle makers. Japanese automakers have fallen behind globally in this area.
Nissan and Honda had already announced in March that they would collaborate in the future on the development of electric vehicles and software technologies to reduce their costs and improve competitiveness. Mitsubishi joined these talks in August.
“Honda and Nissan have begun considering a business integration and will explore the creation of significant synergies between the two companies in a wide range of areas,” Honda CEO Makoto Uchida said. “It is significant that Nissan’s partner, Mitsubishi Motors, is also involved in these discussions.”
