Honda Motor and Toyota subsidiary Hino are to join the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) joint venture between SoftBank and Toyota known as Monet Technologies.
Hino and Honda will each invest JPY249.95m in Monet and acquire 9.998% of its shares.
Junichi Miyakawa, president and CEO of Monet and CTO of SoftBank, said: "This partnership will allow us to coordinate the vehicle data on passenger and object mobility that Hino collects from its trucks and buses and the data Honda obtains from its mobility services that utilise passenger cars and other vehicles so we can further evolve the platform. By integrating these wide and varied datasets, Monet will build an advanced MaaS platform that helps enable an autonomous driving society."
Yoshio Shimo, president & CEO of Hino said: "Our role is to create new value by realising the products and services wished for by our customers and society, and we decided that participating in Monet was the best way to further accelerate this endeavour."
Takahiro Hachigo, president and CEO of Honda Motor, said: "Honda hopes to realize the more efficient promotion of acquiring users and social acceptance of mobility services, various experimental projects, and public relations activities for necessary regulatory changes.
"Honda wants to contribute to the revitalisation of the mobility service industry in Japan and solve traffic-related problems facing Japanese society."
