General Motors and Honda are teaming up in North America, with a couple of goals in mind — namely, cost savings and future vehicle development.
The companies announced on Thursday that they have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to try and build a North American automotive alliance. Under this alliance, the companies hope to work together in purchasing, research and development, connected services, and creating a range of cars that will be sold under respective Honda and GM brands.
Joint engineering will start early next year and will include the sharing of common vehicle platforms that include internal-combustion and electrified powertrains. Doing so will result in "substantial cost efficiencies," GM said in its statement.
"This would enable both GM and Honda to make greater investments in advanced and next-generation technologies," the statement read.
GM and Honda started working together more than 20 years ago. Recent joint projects include fuel cells, batteries, and autonomous cars. Thursday's memorandum of understanding expands upon a previous agreement from April to create two new all-electric Hondas that are built on GM's Ultium battery-powered platform.
The new GM-Honda alliance is similar to the Ford-Volkswagen partnership announced in 2019, where Ford would build an all-electric car on Volkswagen's Modular Electric Toolkit EV platform beginning in 2023.
