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

reuters.com

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

#221

Post by spacebanana7 »

rr808 wrote: post #145
orwin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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

#222

Post by Etheryte »

decimalenough wrote: post #195

> 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".

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.

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

#223

Post by spacebanana7 »

mongol wrote: post #7
tahoeskibum wrote: post #6

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.

Tesla is going down the drain, at least in Europe, unless shareholders evict Musk. Nothing iPhone-like with that brand anymore.

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.

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

#224

Post by momo_hn2025 »

adev_ wrote: post #216
forgotoldacc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 ins…

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.

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

#225

Post by pmg101 »

Etheryte wrote: post #222
decimalenough wrote: post #195

> 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".

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.

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!"

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

#226

Post by adev_ »

momo_hn2025 wrote: post #224
adev_ wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ins…

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.

> 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.

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

#227

Post by hengheng »

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.

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-969661953c77

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

#228

Post by taurknaut »

adev_ wrote: post #216
forgotoldacc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 ins…

> cheats

All i see is competition. Companies cheat by relying on ip to begin with and it hurts the consumer.

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

#229

Post by cjrp »

decimalenough wrote: post #195

> 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".

I was surprised to see a very popular model here (Qashqai) doesn’t have a full EV version yet, only hybrid.

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

#230

Post by adrian_b »

rr808 wrote: post #145
orwin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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