- Nissan and Honda are reportedly engaged in merger talks.
- The US is an extremely important market for both brands.
- Honda and Nissan’s top sellers are their respective compact SUVs, the CR-V and Rogue.
Honda and Nissan, two of the world’s largest automakers, may be working on a possible merger that would allow them to share development and production resources to combat competitive pressure from China and EV startups.
In the US, the largest market for both automakers, there’s considerable overlap between the two rivals. In most of the overlapping segments, from subcompact cars to midsize SUVs, Honda’s models usually have an edge in sales versus their Nissan counterparts.
For example, Honda’s volume leader, the compact CR-V crossover, has outsold the rival Nissan Rogue by more than 100,000 units this year.
There are other segments of the market where one of the companies could help fill in gaps where the other is lacking.
For example, Honda has never built a traditional, body-on-frame truck or SUV. Honda’s only truck, the Ridgeline, is built on a platform derived from the Odyssey minivan. On the other hand, Nissan has decades of experience building trucks and has, in the past, helped brands like Mercedes-Benz build pickups.
Honda does not have a presence in the full-size SUV market, a highly competitive but lucrative segment, with transaction prices often reaching six figures. Nissan has long been a player with its Armada and Infiniti QX80 SUVs.
Conversely, Honda is one of the few brands still selling a minivan in the US. Nissan and its Quest minivan vacated the market a decade ago due to poor sales.
Honda and Nissan both need help on EVs
Both automakers are behind the curve when it comes to electrification. Nissan was an early leader in the segment with the groundbreaking Leaf, but has since failed to substantially build on that success in the subsequent decade.
The company’s Ariya EV, which launched in 2022, was a step in the right direction but is far from industry-leading in terms of performance, technology, and popularity.
Honda is even further behind. Despite dipping its toes into the EV game with the experimental EV Plus in 1997, Honda still hasn’t introduced a modern, self-developed EV for the US market. The company did launch the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX EV SUVs this year, but both are built by General Motors using GM’s Ultium EV platform.
Pooling resources, like many other automakers have done in recent years, could help speed up the development timeline for new EVs while reducing production costs by using shared parts.
Here’s a closer look at the five top-selling models in the US from Nissan and Honda:
