How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed • Hacker News Board

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#191

Post by namdnay » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 6:49 AM UTC

teruakohatu wrote: post #150

Dalewyn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

> 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 compa…

The last time the boss of Nissan didn’t do what they wanted, they put him in prison

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#192

Post by protocolture » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 6:57 AM UTC

crowcroft wrote: post #140

protocolture wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

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.

True, but they sell fleets on that (now out of date) understanding of reliability.

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#193

Post by protocolture » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 6:57 AM UTC

7speter wrote: post #160

protocolture wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 destroye…

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.

Yeah lots of room thats true.

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#194

Post by jac_no_k » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 6:57 AM UTC

teruakohatu wrote: post #150

Dalewyn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

> 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 compa…

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.

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#195

Post by decimalenough » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 6:58 AM UTC

> 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".

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#196

Post by monkeydust » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 7:12 AM UTC

7thpower wrote: post #166

germinalphrase wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/carlos-ghosn-escape-japan-priva... There is a series on Apple as well.

Can highly recommend the Apple series, was a great documentary.

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#197

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 7:29 AM UTC

Reubachi wrote: post #46

Apocryphon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Mazda?

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/l…

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.

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#198

Post by rwmj » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 8:11 AM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #158

ty6853 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghosn was trained as an engineer at École 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 citizens…

“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?

There's a good BBC documentary if you're able to find it. The original source was: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xw3j

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#199

Post by paganel » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 8:17 AM UTC

alexey-salmin wrote: post #109

thuddrff567gg wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 dif…

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.

Re: How Nissan and Honda's $60B merger talks collapsed

#200

Post by jillesvangurp » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 8:20 AM UTC

orwin wrote: post #36

csours wrote: post #5

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 year…

Under Goshn and his close early advisors, Renault-Nissan started working on EVs, launching the Leaf and Zoé. 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 should…

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