- Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Honda recently joined forces to build EVs and software.
- Now, former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn believes that ultimately, Honda intends to take over both brands.
- His case rests on the logistics of integrating the companies during this new collaboration.
Honda, Mitsubishi, and Nissan announced last week that they’d work together to build electric vehicles and software. The partnership allows the three to cut costs and potentially increase profit. According to former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn, the deal is just a disguised takeover of Mitsubishi and Nissan by Honda.
Technically, Honda and Nissan launched a partnership in March and Mitsubishi joined last week. Regardless, the brands say publicly that they’ll collaborate on software development and the research and development of electric vehicles. Theoretically, that could be good for all of them and speed up the time between concept and production.
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Speaking to AutoNews about the situation, Carlos Ghosn openly predicted that there’s an underlying reason for the deal. “I can’t imagine for one moment how it’s going to work between Honda and Nissan unless it’s a takeover, unless it’s a disguised takeover by Honda of Nissan and Mitsubishi with Honda in the driver’s seat,” Ghosn said. “It’s going to be a takeover, a disguised takeover.”
Why does he feel this way? To him, it seems like folding all three brands into unified production makes more sense when one takes the lead. In this case, that lead could give direction to the other two brands as to how things will go.
“Saying they will work together is just 5 percent of the challenge. The other 95 percent of the areas are where you really need to sit down, have a strong position, and have a repartition of the work,” Ghosn said. “You need to work on synergies. You need to make sure that you’re not fixated about your identity or your national belonging. You need to really look at your bottom line, at increasing your revenues, cutting your costs.”
Ghosn of course knows a lot about the industry as he led Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi until he was arrested on charges of financial misconduct. He is now a fugitive from Japanese authorities and lives in Lebanon.