I'm thinking what sells will be different when most cars are self-driving. For one, most people probably won't own a car. The buyers will be companies like Waymo, Uber, and Lyft. That's a very different dynamic. Basically saying Honda doesn't want to sell a commodity with small margins.
If you're just hailing a ride, you care a lot less about the brand of car and it's amenities. You care more about the overall ride share service, price, etc. Very little of which Honda would have any effect on if they don't have some skin in the self-driving tech.
True, it might squeeze the profits from some car manufacturers.
I do see a future in very high end & privately owned cars, which will quite possibly generate even higher margins for some manufacturers. Plus there will be a whole new world of innovative design opportunities in the self driving cars realm, in which the self driving part might end up being be the boring and somewhat commodity part.
If you're just hailing a ride, you care a lot less about the brand of car and it's amenities. You care more about the overall ride share service, price, etc. Very little of which Honda would have any effect on if they don't have some skin in the self-driving tech.