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

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

#251

Post by hmmm-i-wonder » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

ty6853 wrote: post #144

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.

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…

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.

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

#252

Post by Toutouxc » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #80

tpm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Meanwhile I bought a 2024 Toyota that gets 10mpg and I fucking love it.

I honestly don't understand how anyone can not be ashamed talking about their car getting 10 MPG.

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

#253

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #248

panick21_ wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.)

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

#254

Post by thechao » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

idiotsecant wrote: post #245

Gud wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”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.

Do you think individual technical contribution is the hardest part of retooling an entire industrial supply chain? Making a car is easy.

As per "Gung Ho", starring ~Batman~ Michael Keaton.

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

#255

Post by devchix » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

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.

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.

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

#256

Post by uxp100 » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

cjrp wrote: post #229

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.

The leaf and the Qashqi are pretty similar.

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

#257

Post by kwiens » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

mauvehaus wrote: post #243

VectorLock wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet still bland and undifferentiated and a minivan.

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,…

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.

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

#258

Post by creaturemachine » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

spacebanana7 wrote: post #223

mongol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right-wing customers in an EV? Tell us another one.

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

#259

Post by ebiester » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:44 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #248

panick21_ wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#260

Post by smcin » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #173

ty6853 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.)