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
Laharee Chatterjee / Reuters :
Context & Ripple Effects
This sits inside Waymo's first OEM-partnership push: months after Alphabet was reported in late-stage talks with Fiat Chrysler over self-driving technology, Honda confirms formal talks of its own, with Honda supplying modified vehicles while Waymo contributes the driving stack. The structure matters — a tech company licensing autonomy into someone else's cars rather than building them.
The arc since then is instructive: per later reporting, the Honda-Waymo talks ultimately broke down over Waymo's reluctance to share core technology, and Honda pivoted to a development deal with GM. Waymo has kept courting automakers anyway, from Renault-Nissan mobility explorations to a preliminary platform partnership with Toyota aimed at personally owned vehicles.
First-order effects
- Honda gains a path to self-driving capability without an in-house stack, contributing modified vehicles as its initial role in the partnership.
- Waymo secures a second prospective OEM vehicle supplier within 2016, extending beyond the Fiat Chrysler negotiations reported earlier that year.
Second-order effects
- Every major automaker now faces the same forced choice Honda did: license a tech company's stack or fund its own — and Waymo's terms on sharing core technology become the deciding variable, as the later collapse of these talks and Honda's move to GM demonstrate.
- Rival AV developers gain leverage in their own OEM negotiations whenever a Waymo deal stalls, since automakers can credibly walk to an alternative partner.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the auto industry splits into vehicle manufacturers and autonomy-stack owners, with the software side capturing the scarce value — a structure visible across Waymo's subsequent partnerships with Renault-Nissan and Toyota.
- The recurring failure mode is IP control: partnerships survive only where the tech company accepts shallower integration or the OEM accepts dependence, shaping which autonomy alliances consolidate the market.
The trend: Automakers are pairing with autonomous-driving software firms instead of building stacks alone, and the durability of each pairing turns on how much core technology the software owner will share.