Sony Honda to Make Premium EVs in North America From 2025

Sony Group Corp. and Honda Motor will target the premium electric vehicle market through their joint mobility venture.

Sony Group Corp. and Honda Motor Co. will target the premium electric vehicle market through their joint mobility venture in 2025.  (Kim Kyung-Hoon/REUTERS)

Sony Group Corp. and Honda Motor Co. will target the premium electric vehicle market through their joint mobility venture in 2025, as the two try to gain ground in a field already crowded by earlier entrants such as Tesla Inc.

Sony Honda Mobility Inc. will produce its EVs at Honda's North American facilities, and sales and personal customization will take place primarily online, its Chief Executive Officer Yasuhide Mizuno said in a news conference on Thursday. The company will deliver cars to customers in North America first in 2026, with delivery in Japan to come in the second half of 2026, he said. Sales in Europe would be next.

The two Japanese firms joined forces this year, seeking to combine their strengths to catch up to rivals ranging from Tesla and Volkswagen AG to upstarts such as China's Xiaomi Corp. and Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group. Sony expects the partnership will give it access to Honda's decades-long expertise in car manufacturing, sales and servicing, while Honda seeks to tap its partner's knowledge in entertainment, networking and sensors for autonomous vehicles.

Sony's overall mobility effort includes Masayasu Ito, a former longtime hardware architect who oversaw the development of the PlayStation game console.

Sony Honda, which will procure materials for the cars mainly in North America, will host a showcase at CES in Las Vegas in January. Growing tech protectionism is prompting more manufacturers to seek locally sourced components. EVs are laden with a wide array of semiconductors, which have become the focus of a US-China technology race, with the US ratcheting up curbs on chip firms' exports to China.

The company will consider less expensive EV models in the future and is not ruling out production in other regions in the future, Mizuno said.

“We want to create a team that can win overseas,” Sony Honda Mobility Chief Operating Officer Izumi Kawanishi said. “Software will be our strength, compared with our EV rivals.”

Shares in Sony, which has been hunting new sources of growth as it grapples with recession fears, closed down 0.5%. Honda rose 1% after the announcement.