News out Japan sees Honda and Hitachi starting a joint venture that will focus on providing motors for electric vehicles.
The two companies signed today what they call a “memorandum of understanding, which is the Japanese business version of getting a promise ring to start a future company together.
The still unnamed joint venture will be located in Hitachinaka City in the Ibaraki Prefecture, and be initially capitalized with ¥5 billion (~$44 million).
Honda Motor Co. and Hitachi Automotive Systems hope to finalize this deal by March 2017, and the new company will have subsidiaries in China and the United States – both of which will have sales and production capabilities.
It is not clear if the new joint venture will sell vehicle motors to clients other than Honda, but Big Red is expected to use these new power plants in future models, while also continuing to use electric motors of its own design.
This news is interesting, as Honda has spent the last 10 years or so sampling the products of various electric vehicle startups, the most notable in the two-wheeled space being the now defunct Mission Motors, which powered on at least one occasion the Team Mugen Shinden electric motorcycle at the Isle of Man TT.
Hopefully for motorcyclists, this joint venture will be relevant beyond just the automobile realm, and that we will finally see meaningful electric motorcycles from Honda.
We certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the Honda RC-E concept (above) finally come to life.
Source: Honda
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