Nissan By no means Approached Toyota For Merger Plan: Toyota Chairman

Because the automotive {industry} braces for an unsure future, consolidation of huge gamers who have been as soon as vicious rivals 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 right this moment, 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 stated via an interpreter. “However even when they’d thought of that, it will positively be violating anti-monopoly legal guidelines. So possibly they may 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 world firms function—might need balked at a union between two direct rivals who, for a very long time, have been comparable 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 season 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 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 feel I might turn into 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. But it surely’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 essentially thought of late to the sport with absolutely electrical vehicles, and it is rapidly dropping market share in once-extremely worthwhile China. Toyota can also be scrambling to atone for the software program entrance as an increasing number of gamers search to emulate Tesla, Rivian and the Chinese language automakers for his or her means 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 earning profits and doing nicely in gross sales, however appears to be realizing it must catch up extra rapidly 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 yr that it in all probability solely has 12-14 months to outlive with no lifeline of some kind. 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 plenty of industry-watchers imagine it is prone to be a 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 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 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 automobile {industry}, in all probability up to now we have been in competitors between automobile firms about how we will develop quantity,” he stated. “However in all probability that competitors, the character of the competitors, is altering. It is 1736215168 extra a contest about how the businesses can change the autos themselves—to vary the vehicles.” 

As for the Nissan-Honda merger, Toyoda stated he is really wanting ahead to what comes out of it—and methods to compete towards these vehicles. 

“For me, it is fairly thrilling, as a result of I am wanting ahead to [seeing] how they are going to cooperate between one another and the way they are going to develop extra aggressive merchandise,” Toyoda stated. “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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