The Sony and Honda EV joint venture, Sony Honda Mobility (SHM), is no more. Less than four years after its establishment, SHM will wind down its operations while its current structure is being reassessed.
Following Honda’s reassessment of its automobile electrification strategy, wherein they announced the discontinuation of its Honda 0 line, Sony, Honda, and SHM announced a couple of days later the discontinuation of the development and launch of the first Afeela model, the Afeela 1, as well as a yet-unnamed second model.
Considering this, the three companies further considered the future business direction of SHM and concluded that it would be difficult to find ways to bring products and services aligned with SHM’s founding purpose to the market.
Based on these conclusions, the companies have decided to review the current structure of SHM for the time being and scale down its operations. SHM employees are expected to be reassigned to the parent companies and related entities in principle, taking into account their individual preferences.
Regardless, both Sony and Honda remain committed to the principles set out at the founding of the joint venture—contributing to and leading the evolution of mobility. Going forward, they expect to continue discussions on the “optimal form of collaboration,” with the aim of bringing new value to the user experience through software, particularly in the field of advanced driver assistance systems.
This project had a lot of promise at the onset. Unfortunately, the lack of vertical integration on its planned supply chain means this will never be competitive enough vs the likes of Tesla or BYD when it comes to pricing. This project should have started waaaay earlier.
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