Honda to invest billions in General Motors’ driverless car development
Japanese firm is to give a huge financial boost to GM Cruise to ‘pursue the shared goal of transforming mobility’
Honda is to invest some £2.1bn in General Motors’ autonomous car development.
The Japanese firm is injecting $2.75bn into GM Cruise, the American car giant’s arm for autonomous vehicle development, to ‘pursue the shared goal of transforming mobility through the large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicle technology’.
As part of the investment, the companies will develop a purpose-built autonomous vehicle designed for ‘a wide variety of use cases’, with plans for high-volume production on a global scale.
The investment from Honda will come in two parts. Initially, a $750m (circa £578m) equity investment will be made in GM Cruise, while a further $2bn (circa £1.5bn) will be spent on the project over the next 12 years.
It’s not the first time Honda and GM have joined forces, with both firms already working together on the development of fuel-cell powertrains.
Mary Barra, General Motors chairman and chief executive, said: “This is the logical next step in General Motors and Honda’s relationship, given our joint work on electric vehicles and our close integration with Cruise.
“Together, we can provide Cruise with the world’s best design, engineering and manufacturing expertise and global reach to establish it as the leader in autonomous vehicle technology – while it moves to deploy self-driving vehicles at scale.”
This is GM Cruise’s second helping of large-scale Japanese investment this year. SoftBank announced in May that it would put $2.2bn (circa £1.7bn) into the firm – with GM claiming a valuation of $14.6bn (circa £11.2bn) for the company.
