31 years after Soichiro’s passing, Honda teams up with good friend Sony to build EVs

• Honda and Sony to co-develop EVs by 2025
• Deal to finalize within this year
• Honda to build the vehicle, Sony to provide expertise in image processing, entertainment, and sensing

To those who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sony and Honda are the most desirable brands of consumer products. A Honda Civic parked at home, with a Sony Trinitron TV in the hall, and a Sony Walkman / Discman in your school bag – everything the coolest kid in school has.

Although operating in different areas of business, Sony and Honda are closer than many people think. A little known fact is that Honda’s co-founder Soichiro Honda was a very good friend of Sony’s co-founder Masaru Ibuka.

Both are engineers who happened to start a commercial company, and were lucky enough to have a trustworthy money man on their side, Takeo Fujisawa for Honda and Akio Morita for Sony.

They became friends after meeting together for a joint interview for a magazine. Masaru was 2 years younger than Soichiro and they hit off immediately. Mr. Honda was known to be very protective of Sony and saw anyone who criticized Sony as making an insult against of him.

Soichiro often went on trips with Masaru and their conversations influenced each other’s companies.

Unofficial accounts say that without Soichiro Honda, Sony wouldn’t have invented the Walkman. Soichiro found long haul flights to be very boring, and asked his Sony friend if he could make a mini cassette player.

Likewise, Sony had a portable TV in the ‘60s, but the problem was how is a customer out on a camping site going to power the portable TV? Thus lay the seed of creation for the first Honda portable power generator, the E300.

But today, Hyundai is cooler than Honda, Samsung is preferred over Sony. That could soon change though, if both companies could get their act together.

Honda and Sony have just announced today that they will be joining forces to develop electric vehicles.

A memorandum of understanding had been signed and both companies say they expect to form a new, yet-to-named joint venture company within 2022, subject to regulatory approval.

Honda says it will provide its expertise in mobility development capabilities, vehicle body manufacturing technology and after-sales service management, while Sony will take care of imaging, sensing, telecommunication, network, and entertainment technologies.

Although not a household name as before, Sony is still a force to be reckoned with the world of cameras and image processing technology – both are extremely important in building driverless cars.

Honda says the new unnamed vehicle will go on sale in 2025.

Toshihiro Mibe, President and CEO of Honda said, “The New Company will aim to stand at the forefront of innovation, evolution, and expansion of mobility around the world, by taking a broad and ambitious approach to creating value that exceeds the expectations and imagination of customers. We will do so by leveraging Honda’s cutting-edge technology and know-how in relation to the environment and safety, while aligning the technological assets of both companies. Although Sony and Honda are companies that share many historical and cultural similarities, our areas of technological expertise are very different. Therefore, I believe this alliance which brings together the strengths of our two companies offers great possibilities for the future of mobility.”

Kenichiro Yoshida, President and CEO of Sony Group said, “Sony’s Purpose is to ‘fill the world with emotion through the power of creativity and technology.’ Through this alliance with Honda, which has accumulated extensive global experience and achievements in the automobile industry over many years and continues to make revolutionary advancements in this field, we intend to build on our vision to ‘make the mobility space an emotional one,’ and contribute to the evolution of mobility centered around safety, entertainment and adaptability.”