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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

#291

Post by mongol »

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.

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.

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

#292

Post by AcerbicZero »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #87
AcerbicZero wrote: post #81

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.

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...

Ahhh TY; that makes sense.

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

#293

Post by heyjamesknight »

mperham wrote: post #24
heyjamesknight wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The quality doesn't matter if consumers aren't willing to step into the showroom. YoY sales are cratering, down 50% (!!!) in Europe. That's catastrophic for a "quality product".

Which is fine, but that's a totally different argument than the idea that they're "bad cars".

Like I said, Elon's viability as leader is absolutely up for question. But that has nothing to do with the quality of the vehicle.

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

#294

Post by heyjamesknight »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #37
heyjamesknight wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's wild how different experiences can be. I've had some shitboxes in my day. One car had an air intake that would fall off, so you'd occasionally have to keep the RPMs above 2k or it would stall. One car was a 1970s Russian van held together with duct tape and prayers. The door fell off while driving one day, so I wired it back on with roadside scrap and kept going. The newish old model 3 I had for a few weeks duri…

Something, something, anecdotes and data. I've had three of them. All perfect. So I'm at least thrice as right as you are on the topic, I guess.

But in all seriousness: I don't doubt that there are Teslas out there with issues. All car manufacturers make bad cars occasionally.

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

#295

Post by ImJamal »

LunaSea wrote: post #290
ImJamal wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well Hitler wasn't a blue-eyed blond German either.

If Hitler was married to a Sri Lanken man he wouldn't have been accepted by those who believed in racial purity aka the Nazis...

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

#296

Post by olyjohn »

VectorLock wrote: post #267
mauvehaus wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

>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.

Ah yes, so then you buy a 4 door pickup truck or crossover which isn't as good as the minivan in any practical way. But at least you aren't driving a minivan. Your peen size is safe from the world.

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

#297

Post by protocolture »

thmsths wrote: post #270
Toutouxc wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 f…

Eh tbh I think "electronics" is code for "DPF" tbh. Hiluxes had to be recalled to be fitted with a DPF manual burn toggle from memory, or they would just hit a wall and die.

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

#298

Post by ycombinatrix »

VectorLock wrote: post #9
bearjaws wrote: post #2

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 .

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.

Honda E?

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

#299

Post by rawgabbit »

dismalaf wrote: post #279

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 s…

Many years ago, companies believed in diversification. Not having all their eggs in one basket and hopefully having one of their half dozen research projects pay off in the long run. Nowadays it is about sacrificing your future for short term profits.

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

#300

Post by veidr »

Toutouxc wrote: post #276
veidr wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

A car getting 10 MPG consumes, in just 60 miles of driving, the energy equivalent of a household's monthly electricity usage, and can travel less than 200 meters on the energy generated by four hours of running on a treadmill. Please explain to me how thinking that this is absolutely atrocious speaks to my limited worldview?

Sorry, I didn't state that very well. Permit me to retry.

For a lot of people (I'm not actually one of them; I don't even have a car, but I know many of them), the energy efficiency of their vehicle isn't one of the top concerns — or even a concern at all.

Gasoline is available everywhere; they make enough money that the cost of gas doesn't matter to them. They care more about things like: How comfortable is the car to ride around in? How fast can it go from 0 to 100kph? What is the top speed? Does it look cool? Is it bulletproof? Can it connect to my phone without me fiddling with it? Does it have a premium sound system? And so on.

Their response to your comment would be something like, "Whatever, hippie."

It's literally something that a lot of people don't think about even once. This forum doesn't skew that way, I reckon, but I'm pretty sure sure that the vast majority of people who care about fuel efficiency of vehicles care because their financial situation means they have to think about the cost of gasoline (and that is a lot of people, perhaps most). Then there are some people who care about it because that's just their nature, or because they've thought through the consequences and external effects of these inefficient vehicles (a small sliver of people, although energetic about expressing their opinions).

Do you consider the electrical power usage of your computer's GPU? Given your comment, I suspect you might. There is likewise a sliver of GPU users and enthusiasts who compare the efficiency of GPUs, and think about that when building, say, a gaming PC. But most gaming PC builders do not think about that much, and certainly not enough to sway their purchase (let alone feeling "ashamed"). They just care about how many frames per second they can get in their game, and if the drivers are going to be reliable and games will run well.

That's just how it is. Most people don't care about power efficiency until they have to care, because of the money.

Having said all that, now that I have been forced to think about it, yes, a brand-new vehicle that gets only 10MPG is, in fact, atrocious. Absurd, even.

If I did have one, "ashamed" might be overstating it, but I would at least be a little embarrassed — if I ever thought about it. But most people don't, and I think that is the answer to your question.

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