- Nissan and Honda both have separate relationships with Dongfeng Motor, a Chinese company responsible for producing some Honda and Nissan products in China.
- The Nissan N7 is the production version of the first of the four EV and PHEV concepts it unveiled in collaboration with Dongfeng Motor at the 2024 Beijing Auto Show.
- The Honda Ye series cars are also made by Dongfeng. (Dongfeng Honda)
This is the Nissan N7. We’ve seen it before a few times now; first in concept form at the Beijing Show of 2024, then later that year in production-intent form by November. A few days ago, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) exposed the final production model in the last step needed for homologation on Chinese roads.
The MIIT did expose some power and dimensional details; it will be a single motor-only sedan generating either 214 horsepower or 268 horsepower. I mean, it’s fine enough, it doesn’t seem like a huge step in any direction, and it likely will be a fine sedan to serve China’s version of Uber called Didi.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the N7, but it’s clearly not a very exciting sedan. Moreover, I can’t help but think that this car won’t be long for this world because of the Nissan-Honda merger. See, the N7 is developed in part by Dongfeng Motor, one of Nissan’s original partners from China’s 50/50 joint venture scheme to get automakers to invest in China and help its car industry mature.
Dongfeng not only builds Nissan models under contract, but it is also somewhat involved in the development of the cars themselves, especially in the EV era.
Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue. But one of Honda’s two joint venture partners is also Dongfeng Motor. Like Nissan, Dongfeng is part of Honda’s EV development and manufacturing. Most recently, it’s started producing the China-only Honda Ye series of cars.
It seems like there are a lot of models and development chains to untangle here. Not only are both brands intertwined with Dongfeng, but it’s not clear what products will be the winner at the end of the day. Honda has been adamant that it wants to share costs and potentially streamline development costs between both lineups, but it looks like they have a whole other brand in China where they’ve spent lots of money developing, manufacturing and marketing competing lineups of cars that likely have nothing to do with each other. Where does Dongfeng fall under all this stuff?
While at a Honda roundtable at this year’s CES, I asked what would come of the relationships both Honda and Nissan have with Dongfeng.
“Dongfeng Nissan and Dongfeng Honda are two different companies. Of course, we know the situation…but actually, the discussions are between [only] Honda and Nissan. Sooner or later, we will have to talk about it, but so there’s no conclusion over that,” said Katsushi Inoue, Honda’s Global Head of Electrification Business Development.
He said that soon, Honda could make a shared announcement about the future of the tie-ups, but as of that moment they had nothing to add.
From so many perspectives, this mesh-up between Nissan and Honda feels so messy. As stated earlier, Honda said it wants to simplify development and potentially share EV costs with Nissan, but how will that work, exactly? Honda already has three joint ventures or shared companies (Dongfeng, Sony and General Motors) that all have EVs that are unrelated to each other.
Dongfeng itself has a budget line of cars called Venucia – many of Venucia cars use parts from the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi parts bin. How on earth will Nissan fall in line? At the end of the day, which products will remain, and which won’t?
EV buyers across the globe will just have to sit back and watch what models make it, and which fall by the wayside.
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