TOKYO — Honda and Nissan executives spent Tuesday in a Marunouchi conference room advancing what bankers are calling ‘exploratory discussions,’ ‘preliminary frameworks,’ and, in one leaked Slack message reviewed by this reporter, ‘Mom and Dad finally talking about it.’
The two carmakers, both of which have approached the EV transition the way a freshman approaches a 200-page reading list, are reportedly pursuing a tie-up that would create the world’s third-largest auto group on paper and the world’s most administratively confused one in practice.
A Nissan engineer who took a cigarette break outside the Yokohama headquarters said the merger was the first he’d heard of any merger, and asked whether it meant the cafeteria would finally switch vendors.
Internal slides circulated to investors estimate $3 billion in annual ‘synergies,’ a category bankers have historically used to mean ‘we will fire some people in Tennessee.’ The deck also lists ‘shared EV platform’ as a 2031 deliverable, a date by which BYD will have launched fourteen new models, two pickup trucks, and possibly a moon lander.
Toyota, asked for comment, said it was ‘watching with interest,’ which in Toyota-speak ranks somewhere between ‘deeply concerned’ and ‘already won.’
Honda is reportedly bringing the Civic, brand recognition, and roughly 4,300 unsold Prologue EVs sitting on dealer lots in Riverside County. Nissan is bringing the Leaf, factories, and a 13% stake in itself that Renault has not yet decided whether to sell. The combined entity would, by one analyst’s math, own pieces of itself in three countries and owe pieces of itself to two more.
‘It’s the kind of deal where the synergy math works only if you don’t include the integration costs, the legal costs, the cultural costs, or any of the actual cars,’ said Marcus Hellman of Beacon Strategy, eating a tuna onigiri at his desk between calls. ‘Other than that it’s transformative.’
One Honda board member, reached briefly by phone, said he was supportive in principle but had been told the new logo would be presented next quarter, and was waiting to see it before committing further. He was then handed off to a younger staffer who clarified that ‘next quarter’ had been understood internally as ‘sometime.’
A signing ceremony is tentatively scheduled for the first quarter of 2026, pending due diligence, regulatory approval in four jurisdictions, and someone at either company being able to confirm what, exactly, the new company will be called.