Sony and Honda have signed a 50:50 joint venture to establish and eventually build an all-new electric car brand by 2025. Sony Honda Mobility is the rather uninspiring name that will eventually spark an exciting new era of pure electric vehicles. Sony will effectively provide the software brans and Honda will provide the manufacturing muscle. The future electric car will transition more to the software and services side because the engineering of electric motors is relatively simple compared to the complexity of a gasoline engine. That isn’t to say that an electric motor is no less of an engineering challenge.

The company will be managed by senior Honda officials, Yasuhide Mizuno a high-ranking senior manager at Honda will become the Chairman and CEO of the new joint venture. Sony’s executive vice president, Izumi Kawanshi is named as the President and COO (Cheif Operating officer.

Sony Honda Mobility will converge the expertise of Honda’s manufacturing and engineering capabilities with Sony’s telecommunications, image sensing and entertainment products and services. The new company will be headquartered in Tokyo, and operations formally began on June 1 2022.

The joint venture will target and sell vehicles in Japan, Europe and the USA. Honda began a 10-year product roadmap that will see it transition from gasoline-powered cars to battery/electric by 2030. Honda plans to introduce 30 all-new EV models by 2030 with an annual production target of 2 million EVs per year.

The e-Architecture platform is Honda’s software-enabled next-generation vehicle product offensive that will launch in 2026. For Honda and Sony, convergence will be a small but important step in establishing new business models.