Honda says it has entered into formal talks with Alphabet's Waymo to add self-driving tech to its cars, will provide modified vehicles initially
Honda Motor Co Ltd's R&D unit said on Wednesday it has entered into formal talks with Alphabet Inc's Waymo to add self-driving technology to its vehicles.
Context & Ripple Effects
Waymo spent 2016 converting its Google Car project into an OEM-licensing business: months after late-stage talks with Fiat Chrysler surfaced in April, Honda's R&D unit has now entered formal negotiations to put Waymo's self-driving technology into Honda vehicles, with Honda supplying modified cars first.
The arc matters because this particular pairing did not hold — reporting two years later says the talks collapsed over Waymo's reluctance to share core technology, pushing Honda into a development deal with GM instead, while Waymo went on to sign mobility explorations with Renault-Nissan and eventually a platform partnership with Toyota aimed at personally owned vehicles.
First-order effects
- Honda gains a path to self-driving capability without building a full stack in-house, contributing modified vehicles as its initial role in the partnership.
- Waymo adds a second major automaker counterpart alongside Fiat Chrysler, extending its licensing strategy from retrofitted test fleets toward production carmakers.
Second-order effects
- Every major automaker without an in-house autonomy program faces pressure to lock in a tech partner of its own, since the FCA and Honda negotiations show Waymo picking partners sequentially rather than exclusively.
- The deal's sticking point — how much of Waymo's core technology gets shared versus licensed — becomes the template condition that later pushes Honda toward GM when the terms don't hold.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, carmaking splits into brands that own their autonomy stack and brands that rent one, with the licensors controlling the customer relationship and the data.
- Waymo's willingness to share core technology — or withhold it — effectively decides which OEM alliances survive, shaping whether autonomous driving ends up concentrated in a few tech-owned platforms or distributed across carmaker fleets.
The trend: Automakers are shifting from building self-driving systems in-house to sourcing them from tech firms, with control over the core stack determining which partnerships endure.