Honda Aims for China, Partners with Alibaba
The Nikkei Asian Review reports that the Japanese car manufacturer Honda Motor has been expanding their partnership with Alibaba. This agreement should lead them to propose an in-car payment feature for Chinese drivers, among other connected services.
Concerned connected vehicles would make it possible for drivers to pay online for several services, including fuel refills and car parking.
These vehicles will provide access to various kinds of data, including road traffic, through relying on AutoNavi technologies. This specialist was bought out by Alibaba in 2014.
Car drivers would then be able to access these services through the AutoNavi interface and may use Alipay for the payment step.
Comments – China: an Eldorado for car manufacturers
The Chinese car industry has been growing strong and attracting manufacturers. On this market, Internet and e-commerce giants have become key partners for these players as they seek to craft increasingly connected sets of services for their vehicles. This fact has been confirmed this year at the CES event in Las Vegas. Several partnerships building bridges between Web players and car manufacturers have been announced: Nvidia and Volkswagen, for instance. Alibaba, for their part, are already working with many car manufacturers, and Ford just unveiled a partnership with this e-merchant.
This group started focusing on in-car commerce back in 2015, through partnering with the Chinese company SAIC Motor. In this new example, Honda is trying to gain momentum in China, while working on new features that will be needed for their next-generation vehicles.
According to IDC, the Chinese market for connected cars could grow from 4.87 billion dollars in 2016 to 10.5 billion by 2021. Manufacturers have to stay on board as this extraordinary growth unfolds, and still meet major needs, such as securing and making the most of the data that go through these vehicles.
In January 2017, Honda also unveiled an in-car payment service with ParkWhiz and Visa, among others, and then integrated Visa Checkout.