[HN Gopher] How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
___________________________________________________________________
How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed
Author : comebhack
Score : 187 points
Date : 2025-02-12 16:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| bearjaws wrote:
| IMO a Honda Nissan merger would have been terrible for Honda.
|
| Nissan is clearly an anchor, and acquiring it would have just
| dragged Honda down .
| Grazester wrote:
| Funny that's what those Nissan CVT's and variable compression
| engines are only good for, anchors.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| nah they're far too freakin fragile to be anchors, given how
| regularly they shatter or break
| VectorLock wrote:
| Its too bad since Honda has seemed to have totally lost its
| luster the past decade or so. Honda was Apple to Toyota's
| Microsoft for a long time, now their cars are bland and
| undifferentiated, rather than the innovative leaders they used
| to be.
| killerpopiller wrote:
| habe you seen the Honda e?
| VectorLock wrote:
| Its cute but not particularly exciting in my opinion, what
| do you think?
| thedrbrian wrote:
| and it's not a tenth as good looking as the concept
| lmz wrote:
| The Honda e which is no longer produced?
| https://www.motor1.com/news/700419/honda-e-production-
| ending...
| robin_reala wrote:
| I would have bought one had it even had a 50kwh battery,
| but 35kwh made it just dead in the water to me
| unfortunately.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Uhh, the Odyssey is still best of breed for minivans in the
| price segment.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Yet still bland and undifferentiated and a minivan.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I'm not personally convinced that minivans lend
| themselves to much differentiation. They all hold about
| seven people, and more dollars gets you more screens.
|
| It's a box on wheels that gets seven people from point a
| to point b. The screens help stupify the kids in the back
| to make the journey quieter for the adults in the front.
| Nobody is shopping by zero-sixty times, the maintenance
| intervals are all about the same, and they all fit
| roughly the same amount of stuff.
|
| The most differentiation you're likely to find is that
| one or two will fit a sheet of plywood in the back, which
| is admittedly a pretty fringe thing to differentiate on,
| and frequently only matters to the second owner who is a
| tradesperson who doesn't want a full-sized van and
| doesn't mind a few stains from the kids who used to ride
| around in the back eating their breakfasts.
|
| Ironically, the Honda Odyssey used to be differentiated
| by having regular doors in the back instead of sliding
| doors. They clearly decided that that wasn't an
| advantageous differentiator, and went to sliding doors
| after just four years.
| kwiens wrote:
| The Toyota Sienna is the only minivan with all-wheel
| drive, which matters in cold climates or for the more
| adventerous families. It's built on the same chassis as
| the Highlander.
| slantyyz wrote:
| Not to mention that the Sienna hybrid gets crazy good
| fuel economy for a mini van.
| VectorLock wrote:
| >I'm not personally convinced that minivans lend
| themselves to much differentiation.
|
| I agree. That is why my original thesis was that Hondas
| are now uninspiring, undifferentiated and boring. Pretty
| much minivans are all those things, by default.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I'd definitely disagree. Current Odysseys are absolutely
| a premium feel, especially in the higher trims. In fact,
| thats part of what sets them apart. The entire experience
| just feels so much nicer overall. The seats, the sound
| system, the performance, the thoughtful technology
| integration.. its a great car overall and is especially
| noticeable when compared apples-to-apples with other
| brands.
|
| source: I own a 2017 odyssey, and friend to many other
| minivan owners
| protocolture wrote:
| Still pissed they removed the Jazz from the australian
| market. It was honestly my definition of perfect small car
| for 10 years.
| acomjean wrote:
| The end of the honda element makes me grumpy too.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I have a Prologue, which is a wonderful EV. Unfortunately
| it's manufactured by GM because Honda has been asleep at the
| wheel regarding EVs. They need to wake up and fast.
| bcatanzaro wrote:
| So surprising to me that GM's most successful EV in some
| ways is sold by Honda.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| From my consumer's perspective: amen. At least in the US they
| were always "like Toyota, but a bit more fun."
|
| I have a friend who worked for Honda as an engineer in the
| past decade and he concurred. He said the goal was seemingly
| to make everything as "mid" as possible.
|
| Their utter snoozing on the hybrid/EV game is baffling. I am
| not sure how much of that was a failure to see the future,
| and how much of that was (perhaps?) due to Toyota snapping up
| a bunch of patents on basic concepts.
|
| My _extremely_ loose understanding is that you can 't
| realistically build a hybrid without licensing a bunch of
| Toyota's patents, but, I could be wrong. (I mention it in the
| hopes that somebody with actual understanding can confirm or
| correct)
| olyjohn wrote:
| I could not understand why this merger was happening. What
| possible benefit was there for Honda to take on Nissan's cruft?
| thuddrff567gg wrote:
| I don't know. I thought they could benefit from Nissan's EVs -
| the thing they have going with Sony is too expensive to be able
| to work ($90K for the base model eek!).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This basically means Nissan is dying. It's finances are screwed
| right now, and this was essentially their last hope. Nissan may
| not survive the year.
| owlninja wrote:
| This made me think of the Nissan.com guy and am just now
| learning he passed in 2020.
|
| https://nissan.com/
| user3939382 wrote:
| Oh that's sad :( I was always rooting for him.
| encom wrote:
| As a Leaf owner, that has me worried :/
| morkalork wrote:
| I don't understand what went wrong here, for a while the
| Nissan Leaf was _the_ economical all electric sedan. Toyota
| was and still is dragging their feet on it and Nissan had a
| lead for years just to blow it?
| kenhwang wrote:
| For starters, the Leaf wasn't a sedan, it was a hatchback.
| In the US market, hatchbacks have always significantly
| lagged sedans in sales despite being more practical. The
| regular Prius has evolved to look sleeker and sportier with
| each generation, but the boxy hatchback Prius V variant was
| quickly discontinued after introduction due to poor sales.
|
| US consumer preference seems to weigh aesthetic appeal much
| more than other markets, even at the cost of function. Some
| other examples are the rugged boxy SUVs that have an
| aerodynamic/fuel economy penalty compared to their sleek
| blob counterparts, or the the coupe SUVs that sacrifice
| both rear headroom and storage capacity for a "sportier"
| look.
| r00fus wrote:
| Several things: hatchbacks do great if you size the up
| and call them "crossover SUVs" - see Mach-E, Ioniq 5,
| EV6, Ariya, etc.
|
| Also sedans do have a feature - less road noise than a
| hatchback.
|
| The Leaf failed because a) fast charger support was poor
| (Chademo vs DC fast or NACS) and slow. b) battery thermal
| management STILL isn't acceptable and results in
| degradation.
|
| We got one as a rental and it was really comfortable but
| I wouldn't buy it because of the above.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Nissan probably has already quit making parts for your car
| anyways. None of the automakers make parts a priority
| anymore. The aftermarket will keep your car afloat for a
| while.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| I doubt the Japanese government will let Nissan fold and will
| instead invest directly, allow Foxconn to take over or some
| combination thereof. Losing the formerly mighty Nissan would be
| a big black eye for the government.
| vardump wrote:
| Both are likely dying. Small manufacturers have hard time
| moving to mass market EV age, even EV pioneering Nissan.
| wil421 wrote:
| They've had multiple quarters where sales dropped by 90%,
| they've been dying for over a decade.
| csours wrote:
| At this point I feel like a rising stock price after a crisis
| should be a major red flag for long term corporate survival.
|
| Carlos Ghosn was able to "turn Nissan around", but it was at the
| expense of future product capabilities (in my opinion)
| [Disclosure I work for GM, this is solely my own opinion]
|
| Also, I must say that it is not clear to me that anyone could
| know what a long term winning play looked like 10-15 years ago
| when the damage was done (in my opinion). It takes a lot of
| effort and money to make a mediocre automobile, it takes a lot
| more to make a high quality automobile.
| orwin wrote:
| Under Goshn and his close early advisors, Renault-Nissan
| started working on EVs, launching the Leaf and Zoe. Early, he
| also managed to streamline production of the two companies, and
| started to implement management changes that let some workers
| have more autonomy.
|
| The issue is that power got to his head and truly believe he
| was the second coming of Jesus or something, and stopped
| improving his companies to rub shoulders with the Nepo
| CEO/aristocrat crowd. Had he continued the push toward
| affordable EV, Nissan could have been BYD, but R&D stopped, for
| no visible reason.
|
| My personal theory is that the fallout from his divorce
| estranged him from his early friends and his closest advisor
| (his wife) and idiotic sycophants made him believe he was above
| the law and deserved even more. I've heard a lot of good things
| about pre-2008 Goshn, from people who aren't usually glazing
| billionaires, so maybe I'm biased.
| csours wrote:
| > My personal theory is that the fallout from his divorce ...
|
| Yes, I've noticed that people having nasty public fights with
| family members can lead to extremely negative effects on
| decision making.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Boy, that final paragraph sure looks like another automaker
| CEO...
| namdnay wrote:
| No he was clearly always an asshole (but I agree he clearly
| had some genius)
| sfifs wrote:
| > and idiotic sycophants made him believe he was above the
| law and deserved even more
|
| Well in all fairness he is above the law. He walked out of
| Japan and is free in his country.
| vosper wrote:
| > He walked out of Japan
|
| Even better: He escaped by hiding in a music equipment box
| that was carried onto a private jet
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57760993
| chasil wrote:
| There are two well-known documentaries about the Goshn
| captivity and escape from Japan.
|
| The first is from Netflix:
|
| https://www.netflix.com/title/81227167
|
| The second is from Apple:
|
| https://tv.apple.com/us/show/wanted-the-escape-of-carlos-
| gho...
|
| Carlos Goshn participated in the Apple documentary.
|
| IMDB is also showing this one:
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt15048602/
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| There was a famous Dutch philosopher who managed to piss
| of the government and escaped from a castle that way
| (minus the private jet) in the 17th century. His wife was
| allowed to bring him books and he used the box to escape.
| He went to Paris and never got extradited either.
| lmm wrote:
| His prosecution was blatantly motivated (the CEO who
| replaced him has far bigger embezzleme^H^Hfinancial
| irregularities that no-one cares to charge him for). I
| doubt people would have been so eager to help him escape if
| he had actually broken the law rather than being charged
| for running a big company while foreign.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| He had enriched himself to the tune of tens of millions
| of company dollars completely undisclosed to the firm..
| he had multiple mansions, yachts, and "CEO Reserve" bank
| accounts that the BoD wasn't aware of. The men who were
| "so eager" to help him escape were paid upwards of $1M to
| do so... man I'm getting tired of people justifying
| ludicrous amounts of graft and theft.
|
| If other people embezzle as well, send them to prison,
| but there's no universe in which Ghosn is clean. And
| there are plenty of big companies ran by people who
| aren't so morally bankrupt.
| gottorf wrote:
| > If other people embezzle as well, send them to prison,
| but there's no universe in which Ghosn is clean.
|
| Well, selective justice is a form of injustice. I only
| have superficial knowledge of the Ghosn saga, but if what
| the GP alleges is true, then it's not fair to Ghosn that
| he's prosecuted for something that others get a pass. Of
| course, I take your point that it's entirely possible to
| be a bigcorp CEO without fraud and self-dealing.
|
| To scale it down, lots of people drive over the speed
| limit, which is against the law; but only some people get
| pulled over and ticketed for it. Many people also observe
| the speed limit. In the Ghosn analogy, suppose that
| Japanese drivers got a pass, but foreigners didn't.
|
| Should everyone get pulled over the instant they exceed
| the speed limit? Do we want to live in such a world? Is
| it just a matter of scale, the difference between driving
| a car too fast vs. stealing millions of dollars from your
| employer?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| > Should everyone get pulled over the instant they exceed
| the speed limit?
|
| In places with speed cameras, that is exactly what
| happens. There's no better way to find an unjust law than
| to enforce it evenly.
|
| And scale is very important! In your analogy, many CEOs
| are speeding, some driving 5mph over, some 10mph, but
| Carlos was tripling the speed limit and then sawed
| through the bars of the courthouse before he saw trial.
| It's insane to me that people are defending it. If you
| don't want to be selectively prosecuted for massively
| embezzling company funds - don't embezzle company funds..
|
| He had secretly bought himself a 140ft yacht with stolen
| company funds!
|
| https://img.20mn.fr/FofgQudYQhKtDOGwCHCuRyk/1444x920_un-
| cust...
| ty6853 wrote:
| I don't care if he raped 12 nuns, he was unable to get a
| fair trial so his escape was just. Japan's justice system
| is a farcical.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Protip - you should care if he raped 12 nuns! Japan's
| justice system, while certainly has issues is universally
| considered to be one of the worlds' fairest. Their high
| conviction rate is solely due to taking so few cases to
| judgement as most plead out.
| smcin wrote:
| Not so - Japan's [criminal] justice system is absolutely
| not "universally considered to be one of the worlds'
| fairest". Cite any authoritative source for claiming
| that. Most sources I found cite the Nordic countries or
| other W European countries.
|
| (A high conviction rate at trial in Japan is merely due
| to not having a right-to-silence, imprisonment till
| trial, prosecutors discretionarily dropping some cases.)
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Japan is 14th here (above UK, Belgium, France, Spain and
| the US): https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-
| index/global/202...
|
| Most of the stereotypes of the Japanese justice system
| are outdated, and it's pretty funny to hear one of the
| wealthiest people in the world claim he wouldn't get a
| fair trial there while he was walking free with
| unrestricted access to his lawyers after numerous arrests
| for serious financial crimes.
| rtpg wrote:
| There are plenty of criciticisms about the means by which
| he was prosecuted but "others get a pass but he doesn't"
| is not a great way of thinking about this.
|
| If the government decides to get more serious about this
| stuff, there will be firsts! There will be people who
| "got away with it"! It's never applied perfectly evenly.
| You gotta start somewhere.
|
| Of course the way he was thrown around, when they could
| have impounded a bunch of his assets and just restricted
| his movements... the police have their ways of doing
| things and restriction of speech in particular to avoid
| coverups is probably a huge chunk of their motivations.
|
| Ghosn isn't the first executive in Japan to ever be
| arrested. But maybe the police felt the stakes were too
| high. During the Livedoor scandal, Horie had to post a
| 300 million yen bond for his temporary freedom, and that
| was for an "internet company". How much would Ghosn's
| bond need to be in comparison? Not saying that this is
| the right way to go about things, but it feels at least
| consistent.
| lmm wrote:
| > If the government decides to get more serious about
| this stuff, there will be firsts! There will be people
| who "got away with it"! It's never applied perfectly
| evenly. You gotta start somewhere.
|
| Sure. But if that "somewhere" just happens to be the
| literal 1 foreigner among literally hundreds of CEOs
| doing the same thing, there will naturally be raised
| eyebrows.
| lmm wrote:
| > He had enriched himself to the tune of tens of millions
| of company dollars completely undisclosed to the firm..
| he had multiple mansions, yachts, and "CEO Reserve" bank
| accounts that the BoD wasn't aware of.
|
| Really? Why did none of that come through in the court
| case then? I don't like the norm of giving CEOs valuable
| benefits instead of cash, but it's undeniably an accepted
| norm, especially in Japan.
|
| He was convicted for the deferred pension compensation
| that he had not yet actually received, and for one year,
| despite the fact pattern being the same every year. The
| court blatantly made the minimum possible conviction
| because they knew none of the charges had merit but
| couldn't possibly acquit him.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The SEC found that he had over $140M in undisclosed
| compensation, much of it hidden from Nissan's management:
| https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2019/comp
| 246...
|
| The French have multiple arrest warrants for him due to
| multiple overlapping fraud and embezzlement cases:
| https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230704-second-
| french...
|
| The BVI found that tens of millions of dollars stored
| there and the luxury yacht bought with Nissan's funds and
| registered to a Shell company owned by Ghosn's son,
| actually did belong to Nissan.. and on and on.
|
| Why does anyone give that absolute creep the benefit of
| the doubt? It didn't come out in the court case because
| he fled the country before he was tried!
| lmm wrote:
| > The SEC found that he had over $140M in undisclosed
| compensation, much of it hidden from Nissan's management:
| https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2019/comp
| 246...
|
| That looks to be one side's claims, and even this one-
| sided telling acknowledges that he never received any of
| that money, and that the CFO and finance department
| signed off on what happened.
|
| > It didn't come out in the court case because he fled
| the country before he was tried!
|
| He fled the country after being detained and isolated
| (especially from his wife) for literally years without
| actually being charged or getting to trial. They were
| blatantly trying to break him without having to go to the
| trouble of actually proving a case. And the trial I'm
| talking about, that convicted him on exactly one count,
| was held in his absence after he escaped and had no
| reason to not throw everything at him.
|
| If and when he's convicted in a fair trial under
| international norms where he gets a fair chance to defend
| himself, I'll condemn him for that. But until then I'm
| not going to take the allegations of the people who
| wanted him gone at face value.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| > Even this one-sided telling acknowledges that he never
| received any of that money, and that the CFO and finance
| department signed off on what happened.
|
| It absolutely doesn't say that.. and it's not a credit to
| Carlos that many of his schemes to steal tens of millions
| of dollars in the future were discovered before he could
| do so.
|
| > _In addition to the more than $90 million in
| undisclosed and unpaid compensation, Ghosn and his
| subordinates knowingly or recklessly made, or caused to
| be made, false and misleading statements regarding more
| than $50 million of additional pension benefits for
| Ghosn. These included misleading Nissan's CFO and other
| Nissan executives regarding the accounting for the
| additional pension amounts, and creating a false
| disclosure to support how Nissan accounted for them_
|
| [..]
|
| > _On or around February 23, 2015, at Ghosn's direction,
| Nissan Employee 1 submitted an "Application for Budget
| Usage" signed by Ghosn, Nissan Employee 1, and Nissan's
| CFO, to approve the use of the CEO reserve to book the
| LTIP awards. Nissan's CFO was falsely told that the LTIP
| awards were a broad-based grant to numerous Nissan
| participants rather than that the vast majority was for
| Ghosn and included exchange rate protection on the
| inflated retirement allowance. Relying on this false
| information, Nissan's CFO approved and signed off on the
| LTIP expense request, and the amounts were recorded over
| three fiscal years. Nissan's CFO would not have approved
| booking the LTIP expense without additional disclosure if
| he had known the truth about its actual intended use._
|
| The board approved Ghosn to create a subsidary to invest
| in new technologies and instead he spent over $20M on
| houses for himself in Rio and Beirut...
|
| I literally can't believe people defend this level of
| corruption. He didn't spend "years" in jail awaiting
| trial, it was 3 months after the first arrest, another
| month after the second and then he fled the country
| within a year of his first arrest [the Japanese kept him
| in jail for those first 3 months because for some reason
| they thought he was a flight risk!)
| lmm wrote:
| > it's not a credit to Carlos that many of his schemes to
| steal tens of millions of dollars in the future were
| discovered before he could do so.
|
| It's weird and misleading to describe money he never
| received and will never receive as "undisclosed
| compensation".
|
| > Nissan's CFO was falsely told that the LTIP awards were
| a broad-based grant to numerous Nissan participants
| rather than that the vast majority was for Ghosn and
| included exchange rate protection on the inflated
| retirement allowance. Relying on this false information,
| Nissan's CFO approved and signed off on the LTIP expense
| request, and the amounts were recorded over three fiscal
| years. Nissan's CFO would not have approved booking the
| LTIP expense without additional disclosure if he had
| known the truth about its actual intended use.
|
| Right, that's the same part I was reading. The CFO is
| evidently claiming now that he was deceived back then,
| let's see what the evidence for that looks like.
|
| From the fact that we have all these detailed figures and
| calculations, it looks to me very much like the CFO,
| board and finance department were in on the whole thing.
| This isn't him secretly taking money out of the vault,
| it's the company doing accounting tricks to pay him in a
| way that's more tax-efficient and then flipping it into
| saying he was stealing from them when they decide to get
| rid of him.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| > _It 's weird and misleading to describe money he never
| received and will never receive as "undisclosed
| compensation"._
|
| That's literally just basic accounting. If you are
| required to report all compensation someone earns and
| they get $100k salary, $100k bonus, and you put $800k
| into a retirement account with their name on it - you
| can't say they only made $200k last year. They only
| reason he will never receive this undisclosed
| compensation is because the plot and the blatant
| illegality was discovered.
|
| And lol, of course his is using the pilfered funds to
| setup his son in Silicon Valley where he worked for Joe
| Lonsdale.
|
| https://archive.is/ijY1o
| lmm wrote:
| > If you are required to report all compensation someone
| earns and they get $100k salary, $100k bonus, and you put
| $800k into a retirement account with their name on it -
| you can't say they only made $200k last year.
|
| And yet the vast majority of large Japanese corporations
| do exactly that, and the Japanese court acquitted him on
| that exact fact pattern for all but one of the years they
| examined.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| You keep referring to a court case but I think you're
| talking about Kelly's? Ghosn has never had a trial in
| Japan, so he hasn't been acquitted (or convicted) of
| anything. Even if the pension deceit was somehow above
| board, there's still the inconvenient 140ft yacht
| unknowingly paid for with Nissan funds and registered to
| Ghosn's son's shell company parked in a bay near Beirut
| that multiple different courts have found was illegally
| obtained..
| BonoboIO wrote:
| As much as i think, that he would never have gotten a
| fair trial ... he did not even pay his escape helpers.
| rr808 wrote:
| BYD is unique because it can leverage the Chinese
| government's push into EVs along with the lax environmental
| regulation giving cheap batteries & other components. I dont
| think anyone can compete with Chinese car makers.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Hyundai and Kia still manage to make fairly competitive
| EVs. Having an established dealer, customer and maintenance
| networks can mitigate those BYD advantages.
|
| Also if Japan had a serious contender fr the EV space, a
| good CEO should be able to persuade their government
| subsidies are deserved. With a trifecta of corporate, union
| and environmentalist lobbying.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I believe that this thesis supported by many Americans,
| that the Chinese companies are too strong competitors for
| the US companies only due to governmental subsidies and lax
| environmental regulation is an extremely dangerous
| illusion.
|
| Until maybe 10 years ago, I would have agreed that all or
| at least most of the Chinese products were no better than
| copies of Western products.
|
| However during recent years, at least during the last 5 or
| 6 years, both among commercial products and among the
| published research papers, I have seen far more innovation
| from China than from USA.
|
| Such underestimation of the capabilities of a competitor,
| like the assumption that without subsidies or lax
| regulations they would not still be better, can only doom
| USA.
|
| While these claims about subsidies and lax regulations are
| ubiquitous in USA for justifying failures, I have yet to
| see any proof or any accurate numeric data supporting them.
|
| I doubt that China really has laxer environmental
| regulations than USA. What is likely to happen is that in
| China it must be much easier to avoid the enforcing of the
| regulations, by bribing the authorities.
|
| Perhaps there are governmental subsidies in China, but in
| USA I never see the start of any significant private
| investment without great subsidies, at least from the local
| government, in the form of various kinds of tax breaks.
|
| This kind of governmental subsidies that are very common in
| USA are only seldom permitted in other countries, e.g. in
| Europe.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| 3-9x equivalent US / European subsidies is a big
| difference. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/foul-
| play-on-the-scale-...
|
| And subsidies don't only affect the final price of a
| good: they also provide a company more funding for R&D.
| To say nothing of forced technology transfers via joint
| ventures.
|
| The EU also still subsidizes a ton of industries, e.g.
| agriculture at EUR40.95 billion
| https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-
| policy/... (I'd agree that subsidies are needed to
| support a key sector like agriculture today, but they're
| still subsidies)
| bildung wrote:
| EU car manufacturers are also _heavily_ subsidized.
| Subsidies are really hard do compare because you can
| structure them very differently and still achieve similar
| results (think direct loans or land leases, lower taxes,
| state sponsored infrastructure like rail, electricity,
| water, large state-sponsored orders, research grants,
| workforce education, consumer grants for EV vehicles,
| lower taxes for EV vehicles etc.).
|
| Here's an article stating VW got over EUR9b over 8 years,
| for example: https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/dax-
| subventionen-gel...
|
| If that is true, BYD actually gets about the same as VW.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > this thesis supported by many Americans, that the
| Chinese companies are too strong competitors for the US
| companies only due to governmental subsidies and lax
| environmental regulation is an extremely dangerous
| illusion. [...] I have seen far more innovation from
| China than from USA.
|
| I full agree on this.
|
| But what people _also_ often miss is that wage levels are
| not even close to comparable. Chinese manufacturing pays
| an average of <$25k (purchasing parity adjusted, ~15k
| otherwise!!) for a 49h week.
|
| It is absolutely expected that the US is not competitive
| in labor intensive industries, simply because Americans
| are _rich_. Trying to "fix" this with tariffs and
| relaxed regulations (to lure heavy industry/manufacturing
| back) is an expensive experiment _doomed_ to fail, and
| taxpayers and consumers are gonna pay the price.
|
| If you campaign with "we're gonna bring back tons of jobs
| that pay $5/hour, but don't worry, taxpayers/consumers
| are gonna pick up the difference", suddenly the whole
| thing does not sound that good any more.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| He's definitely narcissistic. But that doesn't make him
| wrong. It suited the Japanese board very well to paint him as
| corrupt and get rid of him. Nissan's performance after that
| took a decidedly downward trajectory. Which is why the merger
| with Honda became a kind of hail-Mary strategy recently.
|
| There was an interesting interview with him where he
| commented on the, then, still active negotiations about a
| possible merge of Nissan and Honda.
|
| Very interesting to listen to. He identified that there was
| essentially no synergy between the two and that a merger
| doesn't really make sense for either company. They don't
| really complement each other. After the merger, you'd merely
| have two of each in a gigantic company that isn't performing
| great. Similar cars, going after similar buyer segments,
| competing EV strategies and related investments, etc. Except
| Honda is a bit better than Nissan. So, they'd be ending up
| inheriting a lot of problems whereas Nissan wouldn't really
| gain anything they don't already have.
|
| The core issue is that Nissan in particular needs to adjust
| course and is not willing to do that. That's also the reason
| this deal is collapsing: Honda doesn't want to make Nissan
| their problem and Nissan is rejecting the notion that they
| need to change.
|
| Ghosn's analysis was pretty sharp:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljewn28Korw
| Jgrubb wrote:
| > He's definitely narcissistic. But that doesn't make him
| wrong.
|
| If you're right about narcissism, one of the issues there
| is an inability to realize that he can be wrong. "Maybe I'm
| wrong about this" literally cannot occur to the narcissist,
| their entire worldview is built around their being right
| and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong (and therefore
| an enemy).
| timewizard wrote:
| > At this point I feel like a rising stock price after a crisis
| should be a major red flag for long term corporate survival.
|
| It depends. If you see a lot of insider buying after a bottom
| it can be a good sign that there's strong internal faith in the
| companies future. I've used it as a buy signal myself before
| when a market cap is high enough. It has paid off.
|
| > it is not clear to me that anyone could know what a long term
| winning play looked like 10-15 years ago
|
| Well it probably _wasn't_ partnering with a Chinese state
| company to try to expand the brand there. That was a poison
| pill.
| thuddrff567gg wrote:
| This seems to be the classic way in which management types
| destroy technical companies. Same thing happened a decade back
| in electronics companies in Japan (Sony comes to mind).
|
| Technical competence is generally very hard to judge and often
| even harder replace. It's not surprising that the same
| management types are salivating at the thought of replacing
| people with AI.
| m463 wrote:
| I kind of wonder if the endgame for all of this is one-
| product-per-company.
|
| The company comes into being to make widget x, and never
| cares / is able to make another product again.
|
| I mean, that's kind of how it all happens anyway. The people
| who stick through things and make the thing go away anyway.
| the ip is then acquired.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| That seems like the current model in tech, to the point
| that companies are eventually renamed for their only
| product (RIM -> BlackBerry, Sun -> JAVA, dotCloud ->
| Docker), but there are also a few Asian megacorps that have
| their fingers in seemingly everything, think of Yamaha and
| Mitsubishi.
| wilsynet wrote:
| I do not recall Sun being renamed into "Java". It was
| acquired by Oracle as Sun Microsystems.
| pnp wrote:
| Correct, I recall the stock ticker symbol was renamed to
| JAVA, but not the company.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Yes I should have clarified that that was stock ticker
| (or found another actual example).
| devchix wrote:
| Sun changed its stock ticker from SUNW to JAVA. It never
| mattered for a dying company. Solaris packages were named
| SUNWxxxx, and was never renamed.
| achenet wrote:
| to my knowledge, Sun never actually made money off of
| Java, their main source of revenue was always selling
| hardware (indeed, one of the reasons Oracle bought them
| out was because Oracle was one of the biggest consumers
| of Sun's hardware).
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I don't know, the Renault Logan (and the B platform in
| general) was extremely good from the engineering standpoint.
| Cheap, reliable, easy to maintain, easy to fix. The technical
| competence in building gasoline cars was definitely there.
|
| They missed the electric wave sure, but as with any
| innovations the more competent you are in the previous wave
| of technology the harder it is to switch to the new one. But
| it's a different kind of problem.
| teleforce wrote:
| > The technical competence in building gasoline cars was
| definitely there
|
| I'm not sure about your statement here after the wet timing
| belt inside engine debacle for many European cars engines
| including Renault that's still existed until today. It's a
| total disregards of the laws on material physics and
| chemistry [1], [2].
|
| [1] Wet Belt in Oil Engines: Who Approved This and Why Is
| It Still Being Made [video]:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SASSFjIt5I
|
| [2] Why So Many People Hate Wet Timing Belts:
|
| https://www.theautopian.com/why-so-many-people-hate-wet-
| timi...
| consp wrote:
| While all true people also do not service their cars and
| these must be serviced on a regular interval with non
| standard components. Still a stupid design though which
| should never have been out into production. Glad my car
| has a chain, even had one in the past with a wonky guide
| which made lots of noise but worked until the end without
| issues (write-off was not engine related but purely
| economical, expensive tires brakes etc).
| hammock wrote:
| The wet timing belt reduces fuel consumption by about 1%
| so you can thank efficiency requirements for that.
| Gud wrote:
| >They missed the electric wave sure, but as with any
| innovations the more competent you are in the previous wave
| of technology the harder it is to switch to the new one.
| But it's a different kind of problem.
|
| I disagree with this statement.
|
| The greatest engineer, scientist and inventor of all time,
| Stanford Ovshinsky, absolutely had no problem excelling in
| any field he put his mind to.
| mashepp wrote:
| > The greatest engineer, scientist and inventor of all
| time, Stanford Ovshinsky, absolutely had no problem
| excelling in any field he put his mind to.
|
| So, because the greatest engineer according to your words
| excels at something. So it's easy for everybody to do the
| same?
| Gud wrote:
| "the most competent".
|
| Possibly there was a smarter mechanical engineer than Mr.
| Ovshinsky, it would be hard for anyone to argue he wasn't
| in the top 0.1% in his field(s).
|
| Why a top engineer in the field of making petrol powered
| cars shouldn't be able to quickly learn a "new field",
| using quotation marks here because electric cars have
| been around for >100 years, is beyond my understanding.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Do you think individual technical contribution is the
| hardest part of retooling an entire industrial supply
| chain? Making _a_ car is easy.
| thechao wrote:
| As per "Gung Ho", starring ~Batman~ Michael Keaton.
| darkerside wrote:
| It's incontrovertibly true at the organizational level,
| not necessarily the personal. Individuals can be
| polymaths, and I would posit that success in one domain
| can actually predict success in others.
|
| Organizations OTOH typically develop inertia when it
| comes to their goals and purpose. Any change takes time
| to communicate through the organization for one thing.
| People are conditioned to push the Pavlovian success
| buttons of the past, for another. Managing budgets,
| stakeholder expectations, and the disconnect between
| leadership and the ground level are a whole other class
| of issues.
| thuddrff567gg wrote:
| I don't mean to claim that Renault is technically
| incompetent (obv. that's false).
|
| I find that these companies have something very unique
| about themselves in terms of culture. And you lose a lot
| when you try to change it.
|
| For eg. a lot of expats in Tokyo have this attitude that
| Japanese companies are dim-wits and that they have
| "westernize" and become English-speaking techbros (Rakuten
| calls this English-nization).
|
| There might be some things that can be emulated better, but
| the solution always tends to be a bit too... christian, or
| rather monotheistic (ie . wipe out everything before and
| mass replace).
| namdnay wrote:
| M not sure you can even say they missed the electric wave -
| the Zoe and Leaf were some of the earliest mass market
| electric cars
| jorvi wrote:
| The Leaf 2 was and is a very good EV for its price point.
|
| Its weird how Toyota had the first mass-market PHEV with
| the Prius but got hyperfixated on hydrogen cars, and
| Nissan had one of the most successful BEVs (Leaf 2, maybe
| even Leaf 1) and just sort-of gave up. I vaguely remember
| Honda having a decent EV.
|
| I wonder what makes EVs so antithetical to Japanese car
| companies..
| panick21_ wrote:
| All of Japan got obsessed with they whole 'hydrogen
| economy' nonsense. This was just the generally agree on
| 'future' of the economy.
|
| In my opinion this is complete nonsense and after decades
| very little has happened.
|
| Even for planes I don't think its the future. Just going
| one step further and making SAF is just a better plan.
|
| With hopefully more trains, and electric planes for many
| shorter routes.
| rightbyte wrote:
| At the time hydrogen was not nonsense. Good lithium
| batteries happened.
|
| Hydrogen is very impractical. Leaks easely and the
| pressure involved is scary. It is no surprise that good
| alternatives more or less scrapped the whole thing.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And expensive, which is the real killer.
|
| (Noting that this is hydrogen for vehicles; hydrogen in
| other applications are separate matters that should not
| be painted with the same broad brush.)
| ebiester wrote:
| There's an alternative future where some genius figured
| out a technical innovation for hydrogen and batteries
| struggle to scale. There are definite disadvantages to
| hydrogen in retrospect, but some of that has to do with
| the relative success of the engineers.
| adolph wrote:
| Hydrogen is also not particularly "green" without further
| spending for generation capacity.
|
| _Currently, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels,
| specifically natural gas. Electricity--from the grid or
| from renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal,
| or biomass--is also currently used to produce hydrogen.
| In the longer term, solar energy and biomass can be used
| more directly to generate hydrogen._
|
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-resources
| rightbyte wrote:
| Sure but the same is true for charging batteries.
| paganel wrote:
| Just saw a social media post of a guy here from Romania
| going with his first generation Logan all the way to
| Eastern Siberia / Mongolia. Great cars.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Wouldn't you say this is what the current ruling party of the
| government is doing to the USA? Seems eerily the same to me.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Ghosn was trained as an engineer at Ecole des Mines de Paris
| after a humble background in the 3rd world including
| continual sickness from unsanitary waterwater. He worked from
| the bottom up in R&D at Michelin and did the impossible
| turning it around during hyperinflation period in Brazil.
|
| By all estimations he's a genius with as good of chops as
| anyone could ask for his responsibilities, with a unique set
| of citizenship, connections, and multilingualism to go with
| it. Even his escape from Japan was just stunningly executed
| and the perfect selection of professionals with technical
| competence to pull it off.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "Even his escape from Japan was just stunningly executed
| and the perfect selection of professionals with technical
| competence to pull it off."
|
| I'm only generally aware of the series of events here. Any
| good write ups?
| 7thpower wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/carlos-ghosn-escape-japan-
| priva...
|
| There is a series on Apple as well.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Can highly recommend the Apple series, was a great
| documentary.
| hengheng wrote:
| MotorTrend's "The InEVitable" podcast has an episode with
| the WSJ guy that is a lot longer and while less
| information-dense, it is more colorful and still gets the
| story across pretty comprehensively.
|
| https://pca.st/episode/20821dad-77e6-4e04-a97c-969661953c
| 77
| rwmj wrote:
| There's a good BBC documentary if you're able to find it.
| The original source was:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xw3j
| csomar wrote:
| There is a good netflix series about it.
| namdnay wrote:
| He actually did X-Mines, (Ecole polytechnique then detached
| to Mines), which means he was in the dozen top science
| students of his year in France
| raverbashing wrote:
| He's certainly known for thinking outside the box. (but not
| always ;) )
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| A genius at some things certainly. I don't know enough to
| judge his early successes but his more recent ones seem to
| have a theme of constant consolidation and mergers with
| clear short term benefits but medium and long term shaky
| outcomes. Then again that's the trend of all markets the
| last few decades.
|
| Oh and financial fraud appears to be one of the things he
| was good at based on the allegations from Nissan and
| Renault among others.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Could you expend on the parrallel you see with Sony ?
|
| I was under the impression it mostly failed because of how
| bad it was at software, and the strategy tax hitting them
| heavily as their ecosystem was penalized by that weakness, so
| I'd be glad to hear a different take.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| > Technical competence is generally very hard to judge
|
| At an end-user level it always was easy to judge that Honda
| was at the top for technical competence. The same it true for
| judging the bottom rung. You can judge by favoring high
| quality products, or by disfavoring businesses that try to
| sell you on sizzle and "fun". It's all the same.
| tahoeskibum wrote:
| Nissan, Honda & eventually Toyota are going to go the way of
| Nokia/Motorola after iPhone came out. Cheap and reliable Chinese
| EVs will take over the market (like Android), while Tesla will
| probably maintain a halo premium product like iPhone.
| mongol wrote:
| Tesla is going down the drain, at least in Europe, unless
| shareholders evict Musk. Nothing iPhone-like with that brand
| anymore.
| hanszarkov wrote:
| Tesla makes great products.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Tesla has great battery and motor tech. Their quality
| control and car interiors leave a lot to be desired.
| silon42 wrote:
| The interior (and exterior) misfeatures is why wouldn't
| buy a Tesla... also, I'd prefer a slightly smaller car.
| user3939382 wrote:
| This sounds like political venting more than a financial
| analysis.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The parent specified in Europe. It's a fact that in January
| 2025, European Tesla sales have had significant YoY
| declines, attributed to Musk's political activity. A
| greater than 50% drop in sales in France and Germany, for
| example.
|
| Here are a couple sources.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/ea2329e4-b4bc-4e2d-be34-e9a8ea31
| 1...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/business/tesla-germany-
| el...
| bbarnett wrote:
| I cannot read the FT article, but the nyt article says
| sales have halved, and are now under 2k per month in
| Germany.
|
| So it sounds like their sakes were tiny before this
| halving. And with numbers that low, one ad campaign or
| new model by VW could change them.
|
| His donations to parties in Germany seems like a weird
| reason why. He's done all sorts of things in the past,
| and sales went up.
| mongol wrote:
| "Tesla's sales plummet across Europe"
|
| Financial Times January 2025
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/ea2329e4-b4bc-4e2d-be34-e9a8ea31
| 1...
| r00fus wrote:
| Not just Europe: CA sales are down double digits recently as
| well: https://www.newsweek.com/tesla-california-sales-
| decline-elec...
| jszymborski wrote:
| Doing poorly in the other CA (Canada) as well
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tesla-sales-drop-1.7421653
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you know anyone on the political right
| who feels that way?
|
| It's quite possible to win a market with 30-50% of people
| liking you. Any if right wing customers buy Teslas for
| political reasons rather than utility they could reduce
| quality and increase pricing do even better financially.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Right-wing customers in an EV? Tell us another one.
| Vrondi wrote:
| The fascinating thing is that the political right largely
| prefers ICE vehicles in the USA. This is a combination of
| factors, like more rural voters who need more range/work
| more blue collar jobs/haul firewood/etc. Combined with a
| personality type that is more cautious about change. And
| also, the insane prices for things like Teslas here.
| Perhaps Musk's close association with President Trump will
| gain him a small number of new rich fans on the political
| right, but most common Americans in most of the country
| aren't even considering a Tesla to begin with, and it's the
| majority of folks with lower incomes that put Trump back in
| office this time.
| mongol wrote:
| The political right in Europe is not the same as the
| political right in the US. I am myself on the right side of
| the political spectrum and I despise Trump and more
| recently Musk. You can probably still find people that
| don't care, but they are going to be far, far fewer than
| 30%. Owning a Tesla has become something people apologise
| for.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Tesla gained a reputation of being the best EVs around, by
| virtue of being essentially the only company making EVs able to
| truly replace a gas car for close to a decade. It's easy to be
| the best in a category with just one competitor.
|
| Now that other companies are making EVs that compete directly
| with Tesla, they aren't reliably best-in-class or best-in-
| price-point anymore. Compare the Rivian R1T to the Cybertruck,
| or the Equinox EV to the Model Y, or the Ioniq 6 to the Model
| 3. The top of the line Model S still doesn't really have any
| viable competitor.
|
| Tesla has phenomenal battery and motor tech, but their actual
| car design leaves a lot to be desired, and that's starting to
| hurt them now that they aren't the only game in town.
|
| And the fact that their CEO throws Nazi salutes at political
| rallies does not help their market share. In Europe at least
| that's directly impacting their sales.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Lucid has a viable Model S competitor. I haven't driven one,
| but they're very well-reviewed and they beat the Model S
| specs for range.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Interesting, it looks like they've dropped their prices a
| lot since the last time I checked. You're right.
| gottorf wrote:
| > their CEO throws Nazi salutes at political rallies
|
| Come now, even the Anti-Defamation League, hardly a habitual
| supporter of Musk, disagrees with this take. Your opinions
| are your own and you're free to believe he did Nazi salutes,
| but it does make you sound like you have an axe to grind.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Both my grandfathers fought in Europe in WWII.
|
| When they were alive, if I had done what Elon did in front
| of either of them, that would have been problematic.
|
| I think that's a decent yardstick. The absolute best
| interpretation is that Elon is someone who does not care if
| he does things that look like Nazi salutes.
| gottorf wrote:
| > I think that's a decent yardstick
|
| I have relatives who suffered under imperial powers who
| to this day refuse to buy products made in that country,
| even though they're objectively good and in some cases
| the best in the market. I hardly think the trauma of war
| makes for good judgment, even decades removed.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Let's say you convinced your relatives to stop boycotting
| those products. Then, the CEO of a company behind one of
| those products, appeared at a political rally in the ex-
| imperial country, wearing the symbols and colors of
| thebold imperial regime, and waving a flag showing the
| old imperial borders.
|
| I think your relatives would be quite justified in
| boycotting that one product.
|
| _You_ can make _your_ purchasing decisions however you
| like. Other 's don't. Ignoring war trauma makes someone a
| shit businessperson, at best.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Tim Walz hit his chest and then throw up a Nazi salute
| during the campaign. Where was the outrage? Where was the
| 24/7 news coverage?
| LunaSea wrote:
| Well one of these two people spoke at the German far
| rights neo-nazi party (AFD) rally not long ago.
| ImJamal wrote:
| If AfD is a neo-nazi party then why is their leader a
| lesbian married to a woman of a different race? Seems
| like these Nazis aren't being very Nazi like in their
| leaders.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Well Hitler wasn't a blue-eyed blond German either.
| jgon wrote:
| So your prediction is that chinese EVs manage to take over and
| destroy the Japanese car market, but the American auto market
| somehow gets a pass and Tesla wins? Why would Tesla be any more
| able to withstand cars that cost like 1/2 for similar quality,
| and why wouldn't that same calculus apply to their "halo"
| products? Are the Chinese fundamentally incapable of building a
| luxury EV? And if Tesla somehow sees that an EV halo product is
| their only chance for survival, why wouldn't current halo
| manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes and Lexus also try for that
| market, and why are they sure to fail while Tesla succeeds?
|
| And maybe your response to all of the above is that Tesla will
| not be allowed to fail as part of an industrial strategy on the
| part of America, in which case the question is why would the
| other domestic manufacturers like Ford and GM be allowed to
| fall by the wayside? And further, why would Japan not also
| embark on a similar strategy and prop up their domestic
| manufacturers?
|
| Any way you look at it, a prediction that China wins out
| everywhere except for plucky old Tesla moving into the "Apple"
| position seems like some sort of bizarre partisanship/home team
| support that doesn't stand up to a moment of scrutiny.
| lmm wrote:
| > Why would Tesla be any more able to withstand cars that
| cost like 1/2 for similar quality, and why wouldn't that same
| calculus apply to their "halo" products?
|
| It works for Apple. When you're premium you can charge 2x as
| much, because your market isn't as price-conscious.
|
| > why wouldn't current halo manufacturers like BMW and
| Mercedes and Lexus also try for that market, and why are they
| sure to fail while Tesla succeeds?
|
| They will. They're not. But Tesla has a fighting chance, in a
| way that companies trying to compete with China in the
| commodity EV market don't.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| I have _huge_ doubts that Teslas will retain a "halo premium",
| except in some very strange circles. Already they're an
| embarrassing car to own and the financials of that company are
| rapidly flushing down the toilet, making it a question of how
| long it will be a going concern (hence all the frantic rushing
| around for legitimacy in other markets...robots, why not?)
|
| They are widely cited as unreliable, poorly built vehicles. My
| neighbour bought a used model S and the first time he saw us
| after buying it he came over to justify his purchase ("Got a
| killer price, etc").
| silisili wrote:
| > Already they're an embarrassing car to own
|
| I don't know if that's true, but I find it all pretty funny
| regardless.
|
| Five or more years ago, people hated Tesla drivers, either
| because they represented wealth or that they were seen as
| progressive 'tree huggers'.
|
| Today people seem to hate Tesla drivers because the brand is
| for right wing nazis.
|
| I think both takes are misguided, and I don't know how
| popular those takes are, but I can't help but finding the 180
| humorous.
|
| For context, I'm not taking a side and don't have a strong
| opinion either way. I don't own and wouldn't own one, but for
| reasons with nothing to do with politics or quality.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Did people really hate Tesla drivers? Aside from an
| extremely niche "rolling coal" sort, they were just a car.
| An innovative car that had downsides, but also had big
| upsides like insane torque and big screens (which were odd
| at the time, but pretty normal now). They were _neat_ to
| tech sorts.
|
| And notably the average loaded pickup truck -- the kind
| that fill every highway and road -- is more expensive than
| the average Tesla, so I don't think it has ever represented
| wealth, and the "people are jealous" thing has always been
| rather silly. One of the most common situations to see
| Teslas today are delivery vehicles and Ubers.
|
| The honeymoon has worn off, though, and the blindness to
| the many design and build flaws of the vehicle, or the
| extremely anti-consumer behaviour of that company, has
| earned it a public sentiment that has declined. Now add
| that it is the primary wealth vehicle for one of the worst
| people on the planet, such that it started transitioning
| into pandering to let's call them bad people (the
| CyberJunk), and it's just a nameplate carrying a lot of
| negativity now.
|
| >but I can't help but finding the 180 humorous.
|
| The both-sidism thing is so incredibly boring. If everyone
| else didn't start making pretty good EVs, Tesla kept
| iterating and making better products with better quality
| and dealing with their customers better (instead of making
| ridiculous nonsense like their useless truck or robots or
| whatever else), and it wasn't associated with bankrolling a
| _garbage_ huamn being, it would still be a beloved brand.
| But it isn 't 2019 anymore.
| protocolture wrote:
| I didnt have an opinion of them until I sat in one. I hated
| the interior. Its very much like silicon valley trying to
| reinvent things that work. People compare it to an iPhone
| but its like sitting in the Windows 11 start menu. The
| entire design language of car interiors built up over
| decades thrown away for no reason.
|
| Shits me too because I kinda dig the retro aesthetic of the
| cybertruck. Its just completely destroyed by any truck made
| by any other company, electric or not. And even if you can
| mod it to be functional as a truck, you still have to deal
| with that interior.
| 7speter wrote:
| I took a Tesla cab (the crossover SUV). I don't see how
| you can describe the interior as anything remotely
| utilitarian (even the Windows start menu is, even if you
| don't like Windows); the thing was barren other than the
| tablet for a console in the front. I understand that
| might be the entry level version, but you can get a lot
| more car interior for the price from other makers.
| protocolture wrote:
| Yeah lots of room thats true.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > Five or more years ago, people hated Tesla drivers,
| either because they represented wealth or that they were
| seen as progressive 'tree huggers'.
|
| I suspect this may vary by location, or be more of an
| "online" thing maybe. I didn't know anyone who had any
| particular hate for Telsa drivers.
|
| > Today people seem to hate Tesla drivers because the brand
| is for right wing nazis.
|
| Again, I don't really know anyone today in my circles who
| dislike Tesla drivers themselves. Could be a big bias here
| though because I think I likely congregate by default with
| the tiny minority of people who can afford to buy a Tesla
| in the first place (or any such car here.)
|
| I do know Tesla owners who are significantly less
| enthusiastic about their purchase today than they were when
| they acquired it and yes, its because of Elon, but they are
| not about to give up the car over it. They still like the
| car. Equally I know owners who remain thrilled and could
| give less of a shit.
|
| Nobody outside of them really thinks about them much at all
| positively or negatively I would say. Some of them do seem
| to have a tendency to assume everyone will have as much
| interest as they do in their car but I am sure many such
| cars inspire people to this kind of zealotry,
| like...hardware computing brands or sports teams I suppose.
|
| The cars themselves seem ok enough to me. I can appreciate
| what an EV brings to making a car "fun", but its very hard
| for me to find any car particularly exciting or interesting
| to be honest so they don't really do anything to move me
| but as long as the people that do own them are happy what
| do I care? I suspect they feel much the same way about my
| mode of travel.
| solatic wrote:
| Honda is bigger than just automobiles, they also hold the
| lion's share of the two-wheeler market (motorcycles, scooters).
| They're a far way from dead.
| holtkam2 wrote:
| Honest question: are there people who know about Lucid and
| don't consider them nicer cars than Teslas?
|
| Tesla doesn't make a car as nice as the Air Sapphire... I don't
| think they could if they wanted to. So they're forced to stay
| in the less expensive / less quality market segment
| odiroot wrote:
| Honda will be fine. They own the motorcycle market, especially
| in Asia.
| junaru wrote:
| Noone is excited about hondas, its all about Chinese bikes -
| cfmotos, koves, etc.
| eftpotrm wrote:
| All Tesla's global sales cars are due for replacement, and none
| are in the offing. Tesla are circling the drain, fast, and are
| very unlikely to be around in their current form in 5-10 years
| time - the replacement product they'd need to survive takes too
| long to develop and should have already started, but hasn't.
| Best case for them IMHO is that someone spots a key asset they
| own (IMHO most likely the supercharger network) and buys them
| for that, but the stock price is currently wildly overinflated
| which prevents it. One day, that bubble will burst.
|
| TBH if I were on Tesla's board I'd be pushing for a stock-
| funded takeover of a company that has an actual plan and
| ability to deliver it. Merge with (say) Stellantis and they'd
| have a survival plan.
| alecco wrote:
| Japanese carmakers are going to become irrelevant [1] unless
| there's a major change. But that's very unlikely due to:
| 1. Supply chains and key raw materials mostly controlled by China
| 2. Japan's demographic collapse 3. Japanese Gen Z fed up
| with an unwinnable rat race where they live to just pay rent and
| groceries
|
| It's very sad.
|
| [1] https://carnewschina.com/2025/01/13/byd-surpass-toyota-in-
| ja...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| There's one graph that basically predicts which countries are
| going to fail and which are going to prevail. It's the graph
| that shows how many people in the "doing things" age bracket a
| country has.
|
| Compare these:
|
| (germany)
| https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=276&type=Probabilis...
|
| (alternatively, Europe as a whole)
| https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=908&type=Probabilis...
|
| (Japan)
| https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=392&type=Probabilis...
|
| (China)
| https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=156&type=Probabilis...
|
| to this one
|
| (US)
| https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=840&type=Probabilis...
|
| A key aggravating factor is most countries in the first group
| have stagnating productivity and the country in the second
| group has raising productivity on top. This creates a compound
| advantage for the country in the second group.
|
| It seems likely to me that there is almost no degree of anti-
| national behavior the government of that country would need to
| exhibit or no amount of country-eroding policies that could
| forfeit this fundamental advantage. They'd need to get their
| country _literally_ nuked or something similarly catastrophic.
| morkalork wrote:
| Canada doesn't feel like it's winning despite what the graph
| says*. Bringing in tons of working-aged immigrants has caused
| housing (and other living) costs to explode, which in turn
| has lead to less people having children, which leads to more
| immigration to fill the gap and the whole thing has been
| spiraling. Not fun at all.
|
| * https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=124&type=Probabili
| s...
| cayleyh wrote:
| The problem with just "living by the graph" is that it
| ignores whether the country has the capacity to provide
| basics like food, clothing, shelter, and employment to the
| population. You need to have both to have the working-age
| population be able to engage productively in the economy.
|
| The problem Canada created is that it tried to reset it's
| population graph without ensuring that there was an
| adequate supply of said basics, and in many instances
| (housing, food prices) had policies that actively
| undermined what needed to a happen to support a rapidly
| expanding population. JT and the other liberal leadership
| read the Century Initiative and all they took away as "we
| need 100m people!"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative)
|
| It's not that a country couldn't _theoretically_ be
| successful resetting their population graph through
| immigration, but that they would also have to do things
| that would cause housing prices to fall or more competition
| (ie less corporate profits) in the other sectors to absorb
| the extra demand generated -- 2 things Canada has been
| absolutely unwilling to do in any meaningful until late
| last year.
| 3vidence wrote:
| Yeah there has been a pretty definitive drop in overall
| productivity in Canada since the sudden increase in
| population.
|
| I believe the economic term is population trap, where
| your society / economy can't expand fast enough to make
| efficient use of the addition in capital.
|
| It is pretty clear based on the constantly decreasing GDP
| per capita.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Canada is a Calhounian behavioral sink except they stave
| off the extinction by importing.
|
| Summary with links to various publications at the end:
| https://notwokedot.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/The-
| Behavi...
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Immigration is no excuse for the Canadian housing shortage.
| Canada is one of the world's largest land masses, and -
| even in its South - mainly uninhabited.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| They're over regulated. All the geography and materials
| in the world.
|
| They aren't building because they can't do it affordably.
|
| My friends in Vancouver had a vacant lot in a prime area
| and money. They had to wait for three years to be
| approved to start.
| gottorf wrote:
| This seems to be a problem especially concentrated in the
| Anglosphere. Britain[0], Canada, Australia, and to a
| lesser degree in the US due to its libertarian streak. I
| wonder why that's the case?
|
| [0]: https://ukfoundations.co/
| lmm wrote:
| It's happening in almost every developed country.
| Everyone introduced similar planning/zoning regimes
| following the post-WWII rebuilding (possibly as an
| overcorrection to unpleasant prefab buildings), and 70
| years down the line they're paying the price.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| I don't know about the others but many in Canada believe
| they have the right to an unchanging environment. They
| just want to "get theirs", kick out the ladder, and
| everything stops at that point.
|
| Homeowners still make up the majority of the voter base
| so they will vote for municipal candidates which
| prioritize not changing things.
|
| My prediction is that things will inevitably flip when
| the "have not" group becomes larger than the "have"
| group, but that might not be for a while as home
| ownership only became truly unbearable maybe 10-15 years
| ago.
|
| Another factor is that generational wealth plays a big
| role in home ownership. The dirty secret is those mid 20s
| couples down the street did not purchase that house on
| their own, the either got cosigned by another family
| member with a hefty down payment gift or they inherited
| wealth from grandma. There is no estate or gift taxes
| here so families can perpetuate class transfers forever.
| gravelc wrote:
| Australia is 'winning' even more based on the graph:
|
| https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=36&type=Probabilis
| t...
|
| Housing is very expensive, but inflation is largely tamed,
| unemployment is low, and the government is running
| surpluses - so things aren't terrible (despite what the
| Murdoch media say). Birth rates are falling, but I'm not
| sure how much that really matters given immigration.
| cyberax wrote:
| Canada needs to start a campaign to promote smaller cities,
| rather than concentrating all the people in Toronto and
| Vancouver.
| doubled112 wrote:
| How small are we talking?
|
| One problem is that many Canadians move away from those
| smaller cities because there aren't jobs that pay well,
| yet that smaller city isn't significantly cheaper to live
| in.
|
| Nobody I meet is from the major Canadian city I live in
| now. Maybe it's a fluke, I have only met so many people,
| or maybe us outsiders just managed to find each other.
| cyberax wrote:
| > One problem is that many Canadians move away from those
| smaller cities because there aren't jobs that pay well
|
| Well, duh. See this thread about how this happens:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43026920 when
| "prophets of parking" are allowed to ruin cities.
|
| I'm talking about cities like Kamloops or Calgary.
| morkalork wrote:
| This is where WFH could have changed the landscape in
| Canada but alas, even the federal government is getting
| on the back to office bandwagon. A whole bunch of your
| taxes are handled in Sudbury because they setup an office
| for the CRA there. When you call a company, if you're not
| talking to an agent in India/Philippines, you're probably
| talking to one in St John's. Unless you need to be
| physically present to do manual labour, there's a lot of
| work that can be done remotely outside of the 3 big
| cities. It could have been the solution to the death
| spiral many towns out east are facing.
| petra wrote:
| Assuming a decent AI and robotics, is a lot of working age
| population still a good thing? Or just more mouths to feed?
| mrtksn wrote:
| What happens when a country fails?
| denkmoon wrote:
| We need only to look to Sudan, Somalia, et al.
| mrtksn wrote:
| So Japan etc. are about to be like Somalia?
| gottorf wrote:
| South Africa is a good example of a country that is
| currently in that trajectory.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Right, so you expect Germany be like South Africa soon?
| gottorf wrote:
| I was merely asking your question about what happens when
| a country fails. I have no expectation of Germany turning
| out like South Africa.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Right, I'm trying to find out what people expect to
| happen when a developed country fails.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Like post WWII Axis nations?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't think its similar because this time those are not
| war thorn nations, it's just a period of population
| decline.
|
| IMHO post communist countries after they got their shit
| together is closer analogy. They all had their
| infrastructure built, they had a well educated population
| and the problem was and its still is that there are not
| many young people to look after the aging population.
| vpribish wrote:
| not often a comment here makes an impact like that. wow -
| holy crap.
| alecco wrote:
| It is an important variable. But a more realistic picture
| needs to factor in: 1. median IQ 2.
| skills 3. future unfunded liabilities (welfare,
| pensions, public health, etc)
|
| China has demographics collapse like the West but they have
| high median IQ, high skills, and almost no unfunded
| liabilities. Meanwhile, Western IQ and skills are dropping
| like a stone and they have trillions in unfunded liabilities.
| And any attempt to fix it is either a drop in a bucket or
| going to trigger massive unrest. Just see what happened in
| France a year ago.
|
| I hope China learns this lesson an makes some changes. At
| least they have a bit more runway to do so.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think this really depends on how you define unfunded
| liabilities. China, for example, has mostly not established
| liabilities because the social systems for retiring are a
| joke. People instead save personally and shovel those
| savings into real estate, but the real estate market is
| collapsing/collapsed because it turns out all that
| retirement saving driving up the median-house to median-
| income ratio to 40+x was not sustainable.
|
| To put in perspective how bad that is, cities the West
| considers expensive:
|
| Paris is 17x
|
| London is 12x
|
| NYC is 9.7x
|
| San Francisco is 9x
|
| ---
|
| Shanghai is down from peak but still at 33x, and that's a
| correction. Either people still can't afford to buy homes,
| or a large class of homeowners will become destitute
| elderly people and all that entails for social stability,
| or the government will have to make up the difference
| somehow.
| alecco wrote:
| Good point.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I'd also add that China actually does have future pension
| liabilities. China's past one child policy is causing the
| pyramid to quickly go from 4-2-1 to 1-2-4 in terms of
| ratio of working to dependents; and young people are
| already not participating in pensions because they think
| its highly likely the systems will go bust and they won't
| see a cent of their contributions.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-07/why-
| milli...
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| China still has a good chunk of population in rural area that
| will keep supporting urban population growth for a while.
| That being said, I'm not sure how any of those graphs
| translate to quality of life of an average person living in
| those countries.
|
| When shit hits the fan, there will be drastic changes, just
| like how Japan is accepting more and more immigrants every
| year. That tap will be cut of in a decade or two, because
| every country will be fighting for them unless we have some
| magical economical overhaul. I have zero clues what
| predictions can be made for 2050 in terms of demographics.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| For one on a data level that's not an accurate statement even
| limited to the countries in question, here's productivity:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-
| ho...
|
| Europe has largely converged on American growth, the East in
| particular continues to grow fast. But more important is that
| this is obviously an intentionally selective group of
| countries. Add Taiwan or South Korea to this story and it
| becomes a lot more complicated, because the latter is about
| to/has overtaken Japan on a per capita basis while having
| some of the worst demographics on the planet.
|
| There's research by Keyu Jin that actually shows the
| opposite, globally growth after the year 2000 has been faster
| in aging countries for the simple reason that it increases
| returns on labor saving technology, i.e. automation (telling
| image:https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/13645
| .jpeg) and that is, even if you are conservative on
| technological developments in the next few decades, likely to
| accelerate quickly.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| Irrelevant to whom? Toyota, Honda and Subaru all have lifelong
| customers and for good reason. The cars often last for 20+
| years with minimal upkeep.
|
| The current crop of Chinese electric car makers are all trying
| to fake it until one of them makes it and the money spigot
| keeping them afloat will eventually get turned off at some
| point.[0] Good luck keeping that flashy EV running when the
| company goes bust.
|
| [0]https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-evs-losses-widen-
| des...
| potato3732842 wrote:
| All cars last 20+yr if you give a crap unless they have some
| fundamental engineering or execution Achilles heel (ecoboost
| water pump, Toyota frame rust, Hyundai engine problems, etc)
| that will manifest as a comically not-economical repair when
| the vehicle is old enough in age to be of fairly low value.
|
| Premium cars that aren't so premium as to be disposable (i.e.
| not a luxury car you're gonna trade in every 3-5yr like
| clockwork) always last really well because people who can
| afford nice things can generally afford to maintain them.
|
| This is pretty clearly borne out when you compare same cars
| across brand e.g. Ford Lincoln Mercury panther platform cars)
| or look at the exceptions like all those objectively terrible
| northstar caddilacs and v12 Jags and whatnot that are in
| impeccable shape because they got used and maintained nicely
| for a decade before being "retired" to the garage of the
| owner's vacation property on Cape Cod or perhaps the Hamptons
| or compare airport people moving vans that were retired to
| church group service to work vans that got sold down the
| river to even harder service.
|
| It's really easy to "well we really should sell a water pump
| while we're in here for your 100k timing service" on a Subaru
| owned by someone who can afford a Subaru vs selling a
| preventative transmission fluid change to the guy who could
| barely scrape together the down payment on a Sentra.
|
| I'm being a little sloppy and leaving some loose ends and
| room for nitpicking jerks to wedge in but I think the point
| here is pretty clear.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| I have a Nissan Micra from 1998, working fine. Great little
| car. I inherited from my grandfather.
| ehnto wrote:
| I have driven nothing but pre-2008 Nissans for about 20
| years.
|
| Not a single major failure across 6 vehicles, except one
| Nissan Silvia (1992) that I used to race. Not really it's
| fault, I blew the motor pushing it hard for 3 years. I
| also crashed my first Silvia into a tree at 16, but it
| was running fine before that. That's how it got to the
| tree!
|
| Even the 2007 Pathfinder and current 2003 Stagea are rock
| solid, and I consider them post-peak for Nissan.
| asdff wrote:
| Easily the biggest killer for most people in the
| continental US is winter road salt. You go to California
| and a decent fraction of people people are still driving
| the same 80s and 90s corollas in whatever condition at this
| point. That car was totalled decades ago in the northeast,
| and if it still exist you are liable to fall through the
| floorpan.
| r00fus wrote:
| Amazing you feel that EVs are somehow more maintenance than
| ICEs. There exist EVs that have never had any
| manufacturer/dealer input since the day they rolled off the
| lot.
|
| Tesla/Nio are a bad examples - many EVs were built to be sold
| and essentially ignored by the manufacturer.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| After that EV company goes out of business, how are you
| going to replace that bespoke {$random_part} that broke?
| Any Fisker Ocean owners want to chime in?[0]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Ocean
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Never mind the parts, how do you get your firmware
| updated without being held hostage?
| r00fus wrote:
| You don't. You buy from a large vehicle manufacturer like
| Ford, Kia, etc. where they have commitment to parts
| delivery for the foreseeable future.
|
| Fisker was always a scam if you remember back from days
| of Fisker Karma.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Do the big companies really have a commitment to parts
| delivery anymore, or are they following the same trend?
| Took my friend 9 months to get a part for his C8 Corvette
| when it got rear ended at 5mph. Tons of other GM owners
| have been waiting months to nearly a year for many common
| parts for repairs. Selling parts doesn't make these
| companies money, so why should they care? As long as
| they're making enough to sell the new cars first.
| r00fus wrote:
| I will say a couple of things:
|
| * my Ford Focus EV had a very short lead time for parts
| because it was based on a platform (Focus) shared across
| many vehicles. Also repair cost was very low for a multi-
| car accident ($2k).
|
| * Similarly, when common tech is spread across many
| vehicles (Kia/Hyundai eGMP or GM Ultium) those components
| are often easier to acquire.
|
| Buying low-volume vehicles or from smaller manufacturers
| is a recipe for long wait times and expensive repairs.
| How many Corvettes does GM sell?
| consp wrote:
| Funny thing with Fords is you can pretty much swap parts
| between models even if they are not officially in the
| same platform. Lots of overlap. Got a sync unit from a
| transit for a fiesta, works fine after updating the
| settings to match the vehicle.
| gottorf wrote:
| Corvettes are niche cars, with only tens of thousands
| sold a year. Plus, I don't know when your friend got in
| that fender bender, but post-Covid supply chain issues
| meant that anybody in any newer car (with lots of
| electronics) who got in an accident in the past few years
| waited a while for parts.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I bought a Prius Prime this time last year.
|
| Last week, I finally got my second key fob which was
| absent because of a chip shortage. So even until last
| year, we were still seeing the effects of the supply
| chain disruption.
| tpm wrote:
| They have lifelong customers, but those also don't live
| forever and can change their opinion, and if the carmakers
| don't adapt, they won't survive. For the last 19 years we
| have been buying Toyota, but I'm slowly starting to look for
| a new car and it has to be an EV and Toyota is currently very
| underwhelming in that regard in our market.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Meanwhile I bought a 2024 Toyota that gets 10mpg and I
| fucking love it.
| metadat wrote:
| Which 2024 Toyota gets 10mpg?
|
| For example, the formerly beefcake Landcruiser went from
| a beastly guzzling v8 in 2021 to a weaker v6 in
| 2022-2023, and now, in 2024, a weak 2.4L supercharged
| 4-cyl sipper.
|
| R.I.P. Landcruiser of old, you were an ultimate vehicle
| in your category.
| gottorf wrote:
| If you drive a new Tundra or 4runner with a lead foot in
| the city, you're probably going to get 10-ish mpg. Of
| course, that's just talking about stock vehicles. Plenty
| of modifications you can do a car to make it less fuel-
| efficient ;-)
| tpm wrote:
| Good for you, not so good for the climate, but we get our
| oil from Putin and I'd rather not to.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I honestly don't understand how anyone can not be ashamed
| talking about their car getting 10 MPG.
| caspper69 wrote:
| Prime example: we leased 3 Nissans in a row (dipping our
| toes in with an Altima and then 2 Rogues in a row), so 9
| years worth, but prior to the last turn-in, they released a
| new Rogue that was smaller on the inside (but I believe may
| have been slightly larger on the outside), sapped the power
| out of the base engine (our Rogues had some pep in their
| step), and as the final nail in the coffin, raised prices
| by 15% or so and lowered the lease residuals- the net
| effect was a worse automobile with a ~30% higher monthly
| payment.
|
| Going from under $350/mo to over $500/mo on a 36-month low
| mileage lease made what had been an easy decision one way
| (just get another Rogue) into an easy decision the other
| way (get a different vehicle from a different
| manufacturer).
|
| When you venture into the pricing tiers of higher-quality
| automobiles, you need to be equipped to play in that
| market. Nissan wasn't, at least in our situation, and it
| cost them a loyal customer.
| crowcroft wrote:
| New car purchasing behaviour follows the law of double
| jeopardy. ie. Toyota has high repeat purchase rates because
| it has high market share, not because of loyal customers.
| protocolture wrote:
| At least until the last 10 years people would try and sell
| Toyota on safety and reliability. People who wanted to
| extract every cent out of the cars life would get a toyota
| because it would legit go the distance without failure.
| Dealer told me that it doesnt hold true anymore due to
| electronics. But old corollas are still legendarily
| reliable first cars for teenagers. And I recall the used
| market for old hiluxes is beyond belief.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Second hard markets for second hand cars a little bit
| different, reliable cars end up having higher loyalty
| through selection bias since they simply exist longer
| though.
|
| Toyota doesn't really make money on a Hilux after the
| first sale though.
| protocolture wrote:
| True, but they sell fleets on that (now out of date)
| understanding of reliability.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > it doesnt hold true anymore due to electronics
|
| I'm only in my thirties, but I've been hearing this exact
| (!) sentence, about every single brand, throughout my
| entire life. Surprisingly, most of the brands are still
| fine and selling cars.
| thmsths wrote:
| I keep hearing that too and it feels like a huge
| attribution error: the cars die because of the
| electronics because they are the new component with the
| shortest lifespan, so people blame them. Yet people fail
| to notice that the longevity of cars is on average,
| trending up while the amount of electronics in them has
| exploded. And it makes sense if you think about it for
| more than a second: which would you rather die first, the
| cheap electronic board/sensor or the expensive mechanical
| part?
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| In my experience it has more to do with quality and
| affordability. If you like your Toyota Camry, you're
| probably going to get another Camry. Subarus are slightly
| different in that they have cornered a niche (snowy
| mountain driving) that many owners swear by.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Subaru has the snowy country people and gays down. Nissan
| used to have the same type of affinity with black
| customers - when treating alienated customers with
| respect is a novelty, people demonstrate loyalty.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| No way.
|
| Toyota dealers are the worst - their core customer is a
| like a quiet Tesla fanatic.
| gabruoy wrote:
| I don't understand what point you're trying to make with your
| source. A relatively new company in the Japanese market (BYD)
| has increased sales in its specialized niche of EVs, beating
| out a minor competitor that sells only one model of EV as an
| option to it's brand loyal customers (Toyota, BZ4X). Meanwhile,
| the EV market as a whole has declined significantly in Japan
| over the last year.
| galimalint wrote:
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Electric-
| vehicl...
|
| Sales of EVs in Japan fell 33% y/y to 59,736 cars in 2024,
| the first decline in 4 years.
|
| EV's share of all vehicle sales fell below 2% in Japan
| tjpnz wrote:
| I live in Tokyo and have never seen a BYD in the wild.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| I can understand point 1. But the other points seems odd to me.
| 2 is same in China, just delayed by maybe a decade or two but
| way way way worse due to one child policy.
|
| As for point 3 it also feels odd. When we check stats in the 3
| Asian Tigers, the rat race (and young population sentiment
| around it) seems like Japan < South Korea <<< China. And
| usually my friends from those countries usually feel the same
| way. Lie down movement, all the frustration in SK showed to the
| world through their entertainment kinda shows this too.
| alephnerd wrote:
| While this is HN so any automotive conversation inevitabely
| becomes an ideological war between EV vs ICE fanatics, this
| didn't play as significant a role in the failure of Nissan and
| Honda's merger.
|
| As stated in the article - "the merger talks unravelled in a
| little more than a month due to Nissan's pride and insufficient
| alarm about its predicament"
|
| More critically, Japanese automakers have always tried to
| diversify away from Japan as part of the "Flying Geese" paradigm.
|
| For example, Toyota and Honda truly became "American", Mitsubishi
| truly became "Southeast Asian" (Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand,
| Vietnam), Isuzu became "Thai", and Suzuki became "Indian".
|
| Nissan on the other hand tried a foreign expansion with the
| Datsun in the 1960s-80s, but that crashed and burned horribly,
| and reduced their appetite to expand abroad.
|
| Post-Datsun, most of their international expansion tied their
| future to Brazil, China, and India as part of the Renault-Nissan
| partnership under Carlos Ghosn, but that itself came very late
| (early 2000s) and other players (domestic, international, and
| Japanese) were well established in those markets already.
|
| Furthermore, Nissan Group's prestige division Nissan Shatai is
| too entwined politically to Kyushu, which scuttled the merger as
| Honda would have shut down Nissan's Kyushu factories which
| represent much of Nissan's capex.
|
| Fundamentally, Nissan's leadership has a low appetite of taking
| risks abroad after the failure of Datsun, and this would have
| been toxic for an internationally minded Japanese firm like Honda
| who has stronger PMF abroad compared to domestically in Japan.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| What about Mazda?
| Reubachi wrote:
| TLDR; Mazda should merge with Nissan while they still can do
| it on a fire sale.
|
| Mazda is a huge outlier in manfacturing because they are
| small, but have motorsports calibre/history (meaning they
| have a history of homologating sports cars.)
|
| Mazda sells an order of magnitude less cars than even newer
| companies like BYD. Even less than isuzu. Because of this,
| they can more tightly control investor expectations,
| profit/loss. The stock value rarely changes, nevermind grows,
| so investors are confident in stability and dividends.
|
| AKA, if you work at mazda, you aren't gonna be seen as a mega
| rich engineer. If you invest in mazda, you know you're gonna
| be able to sell at any point without much worry.
|
| That said, I see no future for mazda beyond acqusition by
| chinese firm. It Manufactures in far too high COL countries,
| sells for too cheap, Self cannabalizing (9 different SUV
| models), too tight of a CUV market, lack of brand
| identity.....and the biggest issue, they cannot afford to r
| and d another miata gen, another RX-7,8 gen.
|
| mazda desperetely needs a cash infusion, or joining into a
| much wider network with more selling power. Until then, I
| fear they will coast down the same road as Mitsubishi in the
| us.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Mazda seems to be doing pretty well selling SUVs in the US
| though with growing sales and its highest US market share
| since 1990.
|
| https://www.automotivedive.com/news/mazda-boosts-us-
| market-s...
| Clamchop wrote:
| That's been my impression, interesting to see it
| confirmed. They are very well represented on the roads
| here in SoCal.
|
| They manufacture a lot in Canada and Mexico, though. I
| guess we'll find out what current events have in store
| for them and others.
| zenlot wrote:
| You got it all wrong on Mazda. It's your opinion, but not
| publics and they're doing damn well now, especially with
| their great recent SUVs.
| nl wrote:
| This is an odd comment.
|
| > Mazda sells an order of magnitude less cars than even
| newer companies like BYD. Even less than isuzu.
|
| Mazda sold 1.1M cars in 2023[1]. By comparison Nissan sold
| 2.9M, BYD 2.6M (obviously this is much less than an order
| of magnitude difference.
|
| > Mazda is a huge outlier in manfacturing because they are
| small, but have motorsports calibre/history (meaning they
| have a history of homologating sports cars.)
|
| Plenty of manufactures have motorsports history. Mazda has
| a Le Mons win, but apart from that nothing particularly of
| note. Notably Peugeot and Subaru both have much broader
| motorsports history and are smaller, and Renault has much
| much more impressive motorsport pedigree and only sells
| slightly more cars (1.4M in 2023).
|
| > [Mazda sells an order of magnitude less cars than even
| newer companies like BYD. Even less than isuzu.] Because of
| this, they can more tightly control investor expectations,
| profit/loss. The stock value rarely changes, nevermind
| grows, so investors are confident in stability and
| dividends.
|
| This is an argument that is rarely (never?) made, and not
| born out by the evidence.
|
| Mazda's sales, profit and stock price have all been
| falling. Their stock price is down from 1700 Yen in 2024 to
| 1034 Yen today. It's difficult to say "the stock value
| rarely changes"
|
| > If you invest in mazda, you know you're gonna be able to
| sell at any point without much worry.
|
| Well if you don't worry about losing money I guess..
|
| [1] https://roadgenius.com/cars/statistics/sales-by-
| manufacturer...
| phs318u wrote:
| > Mazda sells an order of magnitude less cars than even
| newer companies like BYD.
|
| In Australia, Mazda has been the 2nd highest selling brand
| (across all models) for a number of years. Not sure about
| last 18 months.
| justahuman74 wrote:
| Australia is a small market though, so being second there
| might not help a lot.
|
| (I miss the 2010 Mazda2 I drove in Sydney for a few
| years, was very fun)
| phs318u wrote:
| Wow. I just checked out a few random other markets
| including Japan, and it's crazy to me that Mazda isn't
| doing better. They've got some really nice cars. It's
| bizarre. I wonder if this is by design or they just can't
| market for shit?
|
| Full disclosure: I'm a Honda driver and was a Toyota
| driver for many years before that.
| neogodless wrote:
| I think U.S.-centric readers may misunderstand Mazda.
| When I was in Singapore, I saw one example of them being
| quite popular abroad. In the U.S., they seem to be more
| of an enthusiast / novelty brand.
|
| Last January, I threw Car & Driver stats for 2023 and
| 2022 best-selling models (from U.S. sales) in a
| spreadsheet. Mazda was the #12 OEM here, just below
| Hyundai. (Note this is _only_ based on top 25 models.)
|
| EDIT: Updated to add 2024 top 25.
|
| In 2024, Mazda's CX-5 dropped off the top 25 best-
| selling, removing it from my spreadsheet.
|
| 03. Honda 807,519 11.8%
|
| 07. Nissan 398,383 5.8%
|
| In 2023 Mazda increased their volume very slightly, while
| Nissan lost share, and Honda increased their share.
|
| _2023_
|
| 03. Honda 759,785 11.1%
|
| 10. Nissan 271,458 4.0%
|
| 12. Mazda 153,808 2.3%
|
| _2022_
|
| 04. Honda 526,699 8.6%
|
| 08. Nissan 326,435 5.3%
|
| 12. Mazda 151,594 2.5%
| unethical_ban wrote:
| They have a district brand identity of it doesn't look like
| shit and they have physical controls for their console.
|
| They are popular and reliable in the US.
| alephnerd wrote:
| US.
|
| Mazda is also minority-owned by Mitsubishi Group and Toyota
| Group and co-owns plenty of plants with Toyota, so it's a
| different story from Nissan Group which retains independence.
|
| At this point, Mazda is an OEM for Toyota Group, and
| previously they were an OEM for Ford.
| protocolture wrote:
| >While this is HN so any automotive conversation inevitabely
| becomes an ideological war between EV vs ICE fanatics, this
| didn't play as significant a role in the failure of Nissan and
| Honda's merger.
|
| I cant stand Teslas, and tesla look alikes, they feel like
| sitting inside of an iPad. I think GWM has the right of it.
| Just pump out hybrids and EV's that feel as much the same as an
| ICE vehicle as possible. Let the customer decide.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I think it's more realists vs. at this point the clearly losing
| ICE proponent side. The EV market grows double digit
| percentages every year. Mostly at the cost of the ICE car
| market. Even last year when lots of the ICE manufacturers
| insisted the EV market was 'shrinking' (no such thing
| happened), the EV market actually expanded by about 20%
| globally. And since the overall car market did not grow by such
| numbers, guess where all that growth went: not them.
|
| Japanese companies like Nissan and Honda are a bit on that
| losing side. Quite literally; both are struggling with rapidly
| reducing demand for their now clearly obsolete vehicles and the
| ramp up of the production of competitive EV replacements for
| those.
|
| Nissan basically dialed back investments after they got rid of
| Ghosn and the collaboration with Renault. Which was actually
| producing some early successes. Like the Nissan Leaf. They
| could have doubled down on that but they didn't.
|
| Now years later they are basically facing a lot of issues with
| with an outdated product portfolio that can't keep up with new
| EVs from others grabbing lots of their market share in most of
| their key markets.
|
| The reason the Nissan-Honda merger was on the table at all is
| that it really has gotten that bad for both of them. And of
| course merging two poorly performing companies doesn't result
| in a situation where the sum of the parts is larger than the
| value of the parts.
|
| The reason this deal bounced (and was probably a bad idea to
| begin with) is that Nissan is in denial about their existential
| need to adapt to the changing market. EVs are at the center of
| that.
| numpad0 wrote:
| This merger deal was a strange one. Honda CEO on stage wasn't
| sure why he was there, unnamed Nissan exec reportedly remarked
| "good riddance" to the deal falling through, ex-Nissan Foxconn
| exec expressing interest and Foxconn CEO eventually declining
| through the press, and so on.
|
| Whoever was pushing it for whatever reason, basically none of
| involved parties were interested in it, other than that everyone
| agreed that hypothetically combining Nissan and Honda would
| create some accumulated capitals.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I haven't been following this closely, but what was the appeal
| for Honda? I mean, Nissan has a few cars that are moving in OK
| numbers these days but I don't see many routes for a return to
| form over the long run; Commodity cars are a dying breed.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| > Commodity cars are a dying breed.
|
| Not in Asia, the worlds biggest car market, and where the
| worlds biggest car making country is. More than anything, low
| end electric cars are MASSIVELY popular in China.
| poglet wrote:
| Was surprised how popular there are, also self driving taxis
| in Wuhan and other places.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| there's a _lot_ of incentives pushing people into EVs. For
| example, to limit pollution and congestion it often takes
| winning a lottery to get a car registration for ICE, but
| that 's generally much laxer if not completely gone for
| EVs.
|
| In Shanghai at one point the cost of a ICE vehicle
| registration cost more than a low end EV.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Beijing has a lottery for plates instead, except the
| allocation for EVs is separate from ICEs, so it is much
| easily to get an EV. Back in 2016, you started seeing
| Model S's driving around Beijing, and those were
| definitely imported with something like a 20-30% tax (at
| least), but the only alternative was no luxury car (like
| the famous black Audi that used to be super common), so
| they just started showing up.
| 1-more wrote:
| You read about the sub like $20K EVs in China and you think
| "maybe we're due to get belt and roaded here."
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I still wouldn't want a Nissan commodity car. My family has
| owned a few and even Infinitis and it didn't turn out well
| compared to all the Toyotas that are still in the family. The
| G35 was a great car, but those days are gone.
| a2tech wrote:
| Nissan has a following in the work vehicle category and is well
| established especially outside the us. They're not nothing.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| Rumour mill is that the Japanese government was pressuring
| Honda to merge with Nissan to save Nissan. During a press
| conference the CEO of Honda Toshihiro Mibe couldn't articulate
| a reason justifying the merger.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/honda-s-ceo-struggles-t...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Pretty much this. Honda was all but begged by the Japanese
| government to bail Nissan out. Remember that the Japanese
| government had a role in taking out Renault and preventing a
| French takeover of Nissan, their political hand was already
| overstretched.
|
| The merger/buyout collapsed because Nissan is too proud to
| admit that they have failed and aren't in any position to be
| making demands.
|
| Also, this is a tangent but with the US Steel
| buyout/investment from Nippon Steel being a common subject
| matter these days, remember what Japan did to protect Nissan
| every time they bitch about the US protecting US Steel. What
| goes around comes around.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| US Steel is in such a bad shape that Trump has to put a
| tariff to save them. At least foreign cars can still be
| sold in Japan.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Pretty much this. Honda was all but begged by the
| Japanese government to bail Nissan out. Remember that the
| Japanese government had a role in taking out Renault and
| preventing a French takeover of Nissan, their political
| hand was already overstretched.
|
| I know little/nothing about Japanese politics. How exactly
| does the Government of Japan apply pressure to a public
| company to merge with another failing public company?
| namdnay wrote:
| The last time the boss of Nissan didn't do what they
| wanted, they put him in prison
| mminer237 wrote:
| Ghosn? He was charged for stealing millions of dollars
| from Nissan, but he fled the country before ever going to
| prison.
| jac_no_k wrote:
| I would imagine by implying that if Honda doesn't
| cooperate, they would face increased regulatory scrutiny.
| IE, Honda factories needs to have more safety
| inspections, vehicles fails to pass emissions tests, a
| finding that requires huge recalls, etc.
| jesterson wrote:
| > How exactly does the Government of Japan apply pressure
| to a public company to merge with another failing public
| company?
|
| Structure doesn't matter. Culturally government
| cooperates with companies through "asking" (or pressuring
| if you like) as opposed to western approach where
| companies can (and will) do as they please within
| law/regulatory frameworks. Opposite works as well -
| companies can ask government and pretty much expect
| result.
|
| Most of it stems from collective culture and family
| values and taken as something quite important.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Ahhh TY; that makes sense.
| tonymet wrote:
| nissan has inventory, factories, dealers , sales channels,
| financing , inventory, partner relationships.
|
| Companies are so much more than the consumer experience.
| tonymet wrote:
| Auto industry is an impossible game. Policy makers are forcing
| them to run concurrent production lines (ICE & electric) ,
| absurdly complex product development, and consumers don't yet
| want electric vehicles.
|
| You can see this in car price explosion and tanking profits.
|
| The result will be consolidation and further automotive
| inflation.
| ggm wrote:
| How did VAG succeed? Because it's the same problems: culture fit,
| market fit. Nissan kept but focused on e.g. light industrial
| vehicles, ATVs and military while Honda plays at being Sony/Apple
| for cars? That could have worked.
|
| But somewhere you need synergies. Common rail, for chassis,
| gearboxes, engines. Diverge on fit out, but share parts.
|
| Nobody in Oz buys Honda Utes. Loads of Nissan tradie vehicles.
|
| It collapsed because they didn't want to change.
| decimalenough wrote:
| > critical to the company's EV strategy
|
| TIL that Nissan has an EV strategy, other than "build the world's
| first mass-market EV (Leaf), then ignore it for a decade".
| Etheryte wrote:
| I think this really underlines the lack of clear leadership and
| vision. They were already headed the right way, all they had to
| do was keep going.
| pmg101 wrote:
| I mean... A more accurate description might be, "They had
| already taken one step in the right direction, 15 years ago,
| all they had to do was make any further steps in this
| direction any time since then!"
| cptskippy wrote:
| I don't think people realize just how much thoughtful
| design went into the original Nissan Leaf and just how well
| designed it was. Sure, it's ugly as sin and a glorified
| golf cart with respect to it's range but it's also a rock
| solid EV and very forward thinking EV.
|
| In terms of safety, it came standard with backup cameras
| and low speed noise features that are now mandatory on all
| EVs in the US. In 2013 they introduced a heat-pump option
| and had features like heated seats and steering wheel to
| reduced the climate control draw on the meager battery.
|
| The Tesla Model 3 that came out 5 years later didn't have
| low speed noise, heat-pump, or heated steering wheel.
| Though they were added later.
|
| In terms of reliability, it just works, so many other EVs
| are completely unreliable and suffer from numerous issues,
| many of which have nothing to do with the EV platform.
| Tesla, Lucid, and VW all have or had issues with door
| handles. GM couldn't seem to make water proof batteries
| that didn't explode. Kia's EVs go through 12v batteries
| faster than a vibrator goes through AA batteries. BMWs are
| great right up until you DC Fast Charge them, at which
| point they like to go into limp mode and throw faults.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| more like culture problem per se, this is what happen to
| (almost) all of CE automaker seriously, EV is more like
| electronic on wheels rather than "traditional cars"
|
| I kind of see many people that already have work there
| that have decade experience don't or can't "changes"
| cjrp wrote:
| I was surprised to see a very popular model here (Qashqai)
| doesn't have a full EV version yet, only hybrid.
| uxp100 wrote:
| The leaf and the Qashqi are pretty similar.
| adev_ wrote:
| The Carlos Ghosn story is really one of the biggest cliffhanger
| in automotive history.
|
| When Ghosn got arrested, the Alliance Renault-Nissan was shredded
| to pieces. Many in Europe (including myself) were betting on a
| Nissan survival and a quick death of Renault.
|
| Renault that was the sick dog of the French automotive industry
| for decades. Mainly due to bad business decisions and a lot of
| debt dating from before the arrival of Carlos Ghosn. With Ghosn
| in exile and no clear successor: there were very little optimism
| in Europe about the survival of Renault.
|
| But ironically: that could not be farther from the Truth.
|
| Renault get away with a pretty well executed electrification. It
| is now hyped and healthy.
|
| Several models have been acclaimed by critics [1] and are even
| qualified as 'sexy' by the younger generation. It also sells
| well: The Megan EV sells well, so does the R5 and the Scenic.
| Renault even outsells Stellantis in Europe[2]: Something that did
| not happen for decades.
|
| And near to that Nissan, the big one in the story, seems to go
| from bad to worst.
|
| Nissan's stocks are going straight to the ground and with pretty
| worrying financial status. Nissan seems stucked with a
| conservative Japanese high level management unable to understand
| nor execute the changes the brand need. They completely miss the
| electrification: The leaf is outdated, the Ariya arrived late and
| full of problems[3]. And the rest of the product ranges do not
| sell well at all outside of Japan.
|
| Nissan need urgently help, and pretty much nobody want to work
| with them in Japan.
|
| This is again one of this twist of fate that only the automotive
| world is able to provide.
|
| [1]: https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/renault/megane-e-tech-
| el...
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/europe...
|
| [3]: https://www.ariyaforums.com/threads/so-many-issues-with-
| less...
| antonkochubey wrote:
| Renault's ICE engines are also known to be extremely reliable
| amongst central and southern europe's taxi drivers (who put
| insane mileage on them). Unlike other French marques - Peugeot
| and Citroen - who are in the "stay away" category amongst
| people who drive 40,000+ km/year
| adev_ wrote:
| > Renault's ICE engines are also known to be extremely
| reliable amongst central and southern europe's taxi drivers
| (who put insane mileage on them). Unlike other French marques
| - Peugeot and Citroen - who are in the "stay away" category
| amongst people who drive 40,000+ km/year
|
| Yes. This is also quite a twist of fate because 10-15y ago it
| was exactly the opposite.
|
| Renault had the reputation of poor reliability with a lot of
| problems regarding electronics while the old TUs engines from
| PSA (now Stellantis) where rocks solid monsters you could
| bring to 300k km without a swet. Many of them are still alive
| and way over 1M km in northern Africa.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| > They completely miss the electrification
|
| This applies to all Japanese car companies now. They've
| basically told China, "Please, take the loyal market we've
| built up these past 40 years. We don't need or want it. We want
| to die."
|
| It makes no sense.
|
| They're betting on ICE vehicles losing no demand and on "clean"
| hydrogen completely displacing all demand for electric vehicles
| entirely.
|
| And a quick rundown on how clean hydrogen energy works in
| Japan: they burn coal or petroleum to make liquid hydrogen that
| will replace petroleum-burning vehicles. So instead of using
| fuel directly, they burn stable fuel that can be used in most
| cars to make unstable fuel that can't be used in any cars.
| Smart.
| adev_ wrote:
| > They've basically told China, "Please, take the loyal
| market we've built up these past 40 years. We don't need or
| want it. We want to die."
|
| It is more complicated than that.
|
| The Chinese government in the last decade made the life of
| foreign automotive brand un-manageable. Most of them (outside
| of the luxury market) are now getting out.
|
| They enforces rules that are clearly designed for IP leaks
| and takeover. For instance: For every vehicule sold in China
| by Toyota and others, the source of the software need to be
| sent to the Chinese authorities.
|
| This is not a market that the Japanese want to stay in: They
| know they are playing against someone that cheats with the
| rules.
| momo_hn2025 wrote:
| any source or link to the specific regulation? in know
| localized data storage, cross-border assessments is a must,
| but don't know souce code is a must.
| adev_ wrote:
| > any source or link to the specific regulation? in know
| localized data storage, cross-border assessments is a
| must
|
| Toyota is well known to have an entire division in Toyota
| China dedicated to re-develop their stack just for the
| local market due to this exact reason.
| taurknaut wrote:
| > cheats
|
| All i see is competition. Companies cheat by relying on ip
| to begin with and it hurts the consumer.
| farseer wrote:
| Toyota has plug in hybrids from which I am guessing they
| would remove the ICE when they feel necessary. The rest of
| Japanese automakers might not make it. You have to understand
| that America has practically banned Chinese cars from
| entering the market and ICE is still big going forward in
| America.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > It makes no sense.
|
| I'm assuming you live in the US: how many US consumer
| companies could you cite that make product that are almost
| useless in the US ?
|
| For instance, would you see Tesla make mainly cars that
| extremely well adapted to small and tortuous old european
| cities ? Or would you image Apple's next iPhone line to be
| fully revamped to only work with Felica NFC payments,
| dropping credit card and Apple Pay support ?
|
| That is kind of how electric cars are positioned in Japan,
| and Toyota is a Japanese company. The market exists, but is
| marginal and not where the country is putting its weight on
| (I think you'll understand why nuclear energy in Japan much
| more controversial than in the US)
| dismalaf wrote:
| I mean, I kind of understand Nissan's position of not wanting to
| be a subsidy. And while Nissan is probably in a worse position
| than Honda, Honda has fallen from grace as well, they were/are a
| one trick pony and also in danger of complete irrelevance.
|
| What I don't get is how Nissan exited so many segments it did
| well in... Look at off-road SUVs: Jeep is making a killing
| selling Wranglers, Ford can't keep Broncos in stock, Toyota is
| now selling 4Runners AND Land Cruisers in the US, where's the new
| Xterra?
|
| Compact to midsize trucks are all the rage too, Nissan basically
| ignored that segment not updating the Frontier for what, 15
| years? Then coming out with a new Frontier that is already 10
| years behind on arrival...
|
| They squandered their first mover advantage in EVs...
|
| They literally gave up on everything that isn't a cheap shitbox,
| all they seem to sell is bland, cheap small SUVs and cars.
| Meanwhile a bunch of segments they used to care about are
| exploding.
|
| Honda meanwhile doesn't really have any hits other than the Civic
| and maybe CR-V... Their SUVs are boring, their cars are boring,
| they have no off roader, never seen one of their EVs (according
| to their website it exists). Hyundai/Kia are doing everything
| Honda is doing but better. Honda has racing pedigree and probably
| could be doing something interesting but they just aren't.
|
| An actual merger with a new name and some new energy could have
| revitalized them both and allowed them to escape the past if
| neither of them want to play to their historical strengths
| anyway... Honda making Nissan a subsidiary though is also old
| thinking, and just ain't it.
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