October 4, 2018 – Honda Motor Co. will invest $2.75 billion in a project to develop an autonomous vehicle with General Motors Co. and its unit GM Cruise LLC, the three companies said last night, amid intensified competition among automakers and IT firms for its commercialization.
Honda will take a stake in GM Cruise for $750 million and spend $2 billion more over 12 years to develop a self-driving vehicle for the GM unit that can be “manufactured at high volume for global deployment,” they said.
General Motors aims to commercialize self-driving taxis without drivers behind the steering wheels next year.
The latest contribution by Honda will bring the valuation of Cruise to $14.6 billion yen, after it received $2.25 billion in investment from SoftBank Group Corp. earlier this year.
“With the backing of General Motors, SoftBank and now Honda, Cruise is deeply resourced to accomplish our mission to safely deploy autonomous technology across the globe,” said Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt in a release.
In the competition to become the first in commercializing driverless vehicles, Waymo, a spinoff of tech giant Google, has started tests on public roads in the United States, while Toyota Motor Corp. said it will offer minivans to ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. which aims to enter the autonomous driving market.
Honda and GM have already agreed to jointly develop next-generation electric vehicle batteries and also have a joint venture working to produce an advanced hydrogen fuel cell system around 2020.