Eighteen months after their merger fell apart over who would control whom, Honda and Nissan have agreed to share the software inside their cars.
The two signed a joint development agreement on Monday covering electronic control units, an in-vehicle operating system, middleware and vehicle control software, with the first cars arriving from fiscal 2029.
The agreement is narrower than a merger and, in engineering terms, more intimate. Standardising core ECUs means agreeing on the computers that run the brakes, the steering, the battery and the cabin, and on the interfaces between them.
Both companies framed the decision as a matter of pace and cost. Faster development cycles and more efficient investment were the stated reasons, after what they described as extensive studies of where collaboration in the software domain might work.
Neither disclosed what it will cost or save. No supplier was named, no executive was quoted by name, and the specific ECUs to be standardised were not identified.
