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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

#231

Post by jorvi »

namdnay wrote: post #187
alexey-salmin wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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..

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

#232

Post by achenet »

mikepurvis wrote: post #115
m463 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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).

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

#233

Post by silon42 »

margalabargala wrote: post #17
hanszarkov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla makes great products.

Tesla has great battery and motor tech. Their quality control and car interiors leave a lot to be desired.

The interior (and exterior) misfeatures is why wouldn't buy a Tesla... also, I'd prefer a slightly smaller car.

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

#234

Post by CharlieDigital »

gottorf wrote: post #138
olyjohn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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.

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.

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

#235

Post by ethbr1 »

adrian_b wrote: post #230
rr808 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dur…

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 €40.95 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)

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

#236

Post by Jgrubb »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #200
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…

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 mer…

> 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).

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

#237

Post by csomar »

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 is a good netflix series about it.

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

#238

Post by panick21_ »

jorvi wrote: post #231
namdnay wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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..

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.

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

#239

Post by mikepurvis »

wilsynet wrote: post #143
mikepurvis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do not recall Sun being renamed into “Java”. It was acquired by Oracle as Sun Microsystems.

Yes I should have clarified that that was stock ticker (or found another actual example).

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

#240

Post by bildung »

ethbr1 wrote: post #235
adrian_b wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dur…

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 €40.95 billion https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/co…

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 €9b 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.

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