Sony Group and Honda announced on the 4th that they have agreed on a strategic alliance in the field of mobility. The two companies will establish a joint venture in 2022, where they will plan, develop and sell electric vehicles (EVs). EV will be released from the new company in 25 years.
Sony's Chairman and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida and Honda's President Toshihiro Mibe announced at a joint press conference. Regarding the big aim of the alliance, CEO Yoshida said, "Sony needs to learn mobility as mobility becomes mobile in the next 10 years," and President Mibe said, "We can find new value through alliances with different industries." Each talked.
It is certain that Apple will enter the automobile business and bring EVs to the market, and it is expected that Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. of Taiwan will manufacture Apple cars on a contract basis, just like the iPhone. Hon Hai and Nidec have partnered to provide the motor. In addition, US Tesla, which leads the way in EV, has momentum such as the market capitalization of stocks far exceeding Toyota.
In the world of next-generation mobility, the EV shift of Japanese automakers has fallen behind the rest of the world, as competition has begun with merging and merging that transcends industry boundaries. Looking at the number of vehicles sold, Germany, the same automobile powerhouse, sold about 350,000 EVs in 2009, while Japan sold only about 20,000.
However, this alliance between Sony and Honda may be an opportunity to repel the inferiority of the Japanese in the EV shift and launch a reversal offensive. Furthermore, it may be a major turning point for the industrial structure of Japanese automobiles to shift to the horizontal division of labor. From this perspective, I would like to consider the significance of the partnership between Sony and Honda.
Sony's EV and autonomous driving projects are called "VISION-S". The public road test was started in Europe in December 2008. It was undecided whether it would be commercialized, but in January 2010, CEO Yoshida announced that he would enter EV as a business at the consumer electronics and IT trade fair held in Las Vegas, USA, which attracted a great deal of attention.
The director in charge of Sony is Izumi Kawanishi, who is currently in charge of the robot business and also oversees mobility projects. Mr. Kawanishi has been involved as a core engineer in the home video game console "PlayStation 3" and was also in charge of rebuilding the smartphone business, which was in the red.
When I interviewed Mr. Kawanishi last year, he said, "Looking back on the past 10 years, the appearance of smartphones and phones has dramatically changed the lifestyle, but considering the next 10 years, even bigger changes will occur. EV. The electrification of cars will accelerate, including shifts, so how do we use Sony's technologies such as image sensors? This project was started with the idea that there should be something we can offer. " ..
Furthermore, Mr. Kawanishi emphasizes "car comfort and entertainment." In particular, the idea is to combine the technology of games and video content with the car, "to increase the added value of the time spent in the car."
That's exactly what Sony is trying to make cars into smartphones. These movements are becoming a global trend. Last year, Xiao Peng Automobile, an emerging Chinese EV maker, announced a new car that can turn the interior of the car into a theater, and the trend toward the introduction of smart cabins with interactive AI around the driver's seat is increasing.
Sony finds something in common between the robot business and the next-generation mobility business. For example, it is a point of moving (running) independently while considering the surrounding environment. The idea of "being close to people" also has something in common. Robots have "functional value" by hardware and software, and "sensitivity value" such as comfort, texture, and surprise that users feel when using it, but future personal mobility will have even more "sensitivity". Sony sees that "value" is required.
In addition to functional values such as communication, smartphones are also highly sensitive products such as ease of use, convenience, and fun to use. In that sense, next-generation mobility will become a smartphone.
Honda, on the other hand, announced that Mr. Mibe, who became president in April 2009, will switch all models to EV by 2040. He made a major shift from a hybrid-centric strategy and said he would not hesitate to join the alliance. However, Honda, who had a great experience of success in the past, had a whistle blow at the top but did not dance, and the site did not easily lean toward the EV shift.
It was said that Mr. Mibe was a little frustrated, and around the summer of last year, Honda decided to work with Sony on mobility in the future. "We held a workshop with young people from both companies, and as we continued to study, we felt that a chemical reaction would occur and new value could be found," says Mr. Mibe.
At Sony, young people are free to think freely and work with trial and error that emphasizes speed. Honda, on the other hand, is not in a position to leave it to us, and decision-making is slow. It seems that the Honda side was also inspired by this Sony climate. As a result, Mr. Mibe thought that by partnering with Sony, he would stimulate the interior of Honda, which tends to live comfortably, and create new value with next-generation mobility.
In addition, Sony has "experience" that Honda does not have. It is to know the "big defeat". In the 2000s, Sony experienced a major defeat in its main businesses of television, mobile phones and personal computers.
For example, TV, along with Panasonic, dominated the global market, but the process of changing from CRT to thin, that is, the business structure changed from vertical integration to horizontal division as TV digitization progressed. The added value of production has decreased. Similarly, in the process of moving mobile phones from foldable feature phones to smartphones, hegemony was transferred from Japanese to Apple and Samsung.
Under such circumstances, Sony suffered a "digital defeat" in its main business, and recovered after a large-scale personnel reduction. Mr. Kawanishi said, "The center of the change in mobility is the shift of weight from the machine called the engine to the software. The experience of failure on TV and smartphones can be greatly utilized."
Honda hasn't lost much in its main business yet, but from some perspectives, it didn't raise awareness of the crisis within the company, and it couldn't be said that it was in a position to directly see the changes in the world. Honda may have called out to Sony in this alliance because they realized that they wouldn't survive unless they changed themselves.
If you compare steady manufacturing to "ground warfare" and IT and financial business that catches the eye of living horses to "aerial warfare", Sony uses the know-how of "ground warfare" and "aerial warfare", which is rare in the Japanese manufacturing industry. However, they do not have the technological capabilities to provide consumers with safe and secure mobility. Honda is good at that point, but it is weak in "aerial warfare".
At the new company, Honda will be mainly in charge of manufacturing, and Sony will be in charge of providing service platforms and software. The point is that both companies will bring their strengths together to respond to the transformational period of technology and business model, and both companies will promote strategic division of labor while learning from each other.
Such an alliance also means that the development and production of automobiles, which had been completed within Honda, will end. In other words, it is a shift to a horizontal division of labor. Next-generation mobility such as EVs and autonomous driving is also known as "software-defined cars," and the weight of software will further increase. Honda plans to take charge of production of the initial model at the new company, but eventually the new company will concentrate on the software area, and there is a possibility that manufacturing will be ordered from another company other than Honda, which has a low cost.
In that case, the domestic automobile industry will also have a “fabless” business model. Fabless is a symbolic product that is planned and developed in-house, but the manufacturing is outsourced to other companies, and the iPhone is planned and developed by Apple and manufactured by Hon Hai and others. In terms of production, cars are becoming more and more smartphones.
It is said that Masaru Ibuka, one of the founders of Sony, and Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda, had a close relationship and learned from each other. Both companies supported the development of the Japanese economy after the war and became Japan's leading "brands". Mr. Mibe described it as "both companies that are historically and culturally synchronized." Again, it is important to return to the origin and learn from each other. The success or failure of the alliance between the two companies will attract worldwide attention, and may be one of the touchstones for whether Japanese industry can face the transformational period.