Sony Honda Mobility, Inc. (SHM), the joint venture formed by Sony and Honda is axing its first two battery electric vehicles. This comes as Honda had to cancel three other BEVs, the Honda Zero Saloon, Honda Zero SUV, and the Acura RSX.
Since its establishment in September 2022, Sony Honda Mobility Inc. had aimed to develop and sell high value-added mobility products and to provide mobility-related services by combining the technologies, expertise, and development capabilities of Sony and Honda.
However, because of Honda’s reassessment of its automobile electrification strategy and factoring the changes to the EV market, the underlying assumptions of SHM’s business operations such as the usage of certain technologies and assets planned to be provided by Honda were fundamentally altered. This has resulted in the announcement by SHM today to discontinue the development and launch of its first model, Afeela1, and its second model.
At the same time, Sony, Honda, and SHM have determined to review SHM’s business direction.
Sony, Honda, and SHM will continue to discuss and evaluate the future of SHM, taking into account the initial purpose of the JV establishment as well as the latest EV market environment, and intend to jointly announce SHM’s future direction, mid to long-term positioning as well as contributions to the future of mobility at the earliest possible opportunity.
it's still operating? Completely forgot the afeela even exists
ReplyDeleteI love Honda and anything Japanese though I feel this Honda and Sony projects will be axed.
ReplyDeleteToo slow, too little, too late. Two very conservative companies trying to compete with very agile "startups."
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