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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

#41

Post by tpm »

onlypassingthru wrote: post #31
alecco wrote: post #8

Japanese carmakers are going to become irrelevant [1] unless there's a major change. But that's very unlikely due to: 1. Supply chains and key raw materials mostly controlled by China 2. Japan's demographic collapse 3. Japanese Gen Z fed up with an unwinnable rat race where they live to just pay rent and groceries It's very sad. [1] https://carnewschina.com/2025/01/13/byd-surpass-toyota-in-ja...

Irrelevant to whom? Toyota, Honda and Subaru all have lifelong customers and for good reason. The cars often last for 20+ years with minimal upkeep. The current crop of Chinese electric car makers are all trying to fake it until one of them makes it and the money spigot keeping them afloat will eventually get turned off at some point.[0] Good luck keeping that flashy EV running when the company goes bust. [0] https:/…

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.

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

#42

Post by Apocryphon »

alephnerd wrote: post #23

While this is HN so any automotive conversation inevitabely becomes an ideological war between EV vs ICE fanatics, this didn't play as significant a role in the failure of Nissan and Honda's merger. As stated in the article - "the merger talks unravelled in a little more than a month due to Nissan's pride and insufficient alarm about its predicament" More critically, Japanese automakers have always tried to diversify…

What about Mazda?

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

#43

Post by vpribish »

formerly_proven wrote: post #11
alecco wrote: post #8

Japanese carmakers are going to become irrelevant [1] unless there's a major change. But that's very unlikely due to: 1. Supply chains and key raw materials mostly controlled by China 2. Japan's demographic collapse 3. Japanese Gen Z fed up with an unwinnable rat race where they live to just pay rent and groceries It's very sad. [1] https://carnewschina.com/2025/01/13/byd-surpass-toyota-in-ja...

There's one graph that basically predicts which countries are going to fail and which are going to prevail. It's the graph that shows how many people in the "doing things" age bracket a country has. Compare these: (germany) https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=276&type=Probabilis... (alternatively, Europe as a whole) https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=908&type=Probabilis... (Japan) https://population.un.org…

not often a comment here makes an impact like that. wow - holy crap.

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

#44

Post by alecco »

formerly_proven wrote: post #11
alecco wrote: post #8

Japanese carmakers are going to become irrelevant [1] unless there's a major change. But that's very unlikely due to: 1. Supply chains and key raw materials mostly controlled by China 2. Japan's demographic collapse 3. Japanese Gen Z fed up with an unwinnable rat race where they live to just pay rent and groceries It's very sad. [1] https://carnewschina.com/2025/01/13/byd-surpass-toyota-in-ja...

There's one graph that basically predicts which countries are going to fail and which are going to prevail. It's the graph that shows how many people in the "doing things" age bracket a country has. Compare these: (germany) https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=276&type=Probabilis... (alternatively, Europe as a whole) https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=908&type=Probabilis... (Japan) https://population.un.org…

It is an important variable. But a more realistic picture needs to factor in:

  1. median IQ
  2. skills
  3. future unfunded liabilities (welfare, pensions, public health, etc)
China has demographics collapse like the West but they have high median IQ, high skills, and almost no unfunded liabilities. Meanwhile, Western IQ and skills are dropping like a stone and they have trillions in unfunded liabilities. And any attempt to fix it is either a drop in a bucket or going to trigger massive unrest. Just see what happened in France a year ago.

I hope China learns this lesson an makes some changes. At least they have a bit more runway to do so.

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

#45

Post by WillPostForFood »

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…

You couldn't see through the rear window if it was raining too hard.

You think there was a glass defect? or was it just wet?

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

#46

Post by Reubachi »

Apocryphon wrote: post #42
alephnerd wrote: post #23

While this is HN so any automotive conversation inevitabely becomes an ideological war between EV vs ICE fanatics, this didn't play as significant a role in the failure of Nissan and Honda's merger. As stated in the article - "the merger talks unravelled in a little more than a month due to Nissan's pride and insufficient alarm about its predicament" More critically, Japanese automakers have always tried to diversify…

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/loss. The stock value rarely changes, nevermind grows, so investors are confident in stability and dividends.

AKA, if you work at mazda, you aren't gonna be seen as a mega rich engineer. If you invest in mazda, you know you're gonna be able to sell at any point without much worry.

That said, I see no future for mazda beyond acqusition by chinese firm. It Manufactures in far too high COL countries, sells for too cheap, Self cannabalizing (9 different SUV models), too tight of a CUV market, lack of brand identity.....and the biggest issue, they cannot afford to r and d another miata gen, another RX-7,8 gen.

mazda desperetely needs a cash infusion, or joining into a much wider network with more selling power. Until then, I fear they will coast down the same road as Mitsubishi in the us.

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

#47

Post by onlypassingthru »

r00fus wrote: post #39
onlypassingthru wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrelevant to whom? Toyota, Honda and Subaru all have lifelong customers and for good reason. The cars often last for 20+ years with minimal upkeep. The current crop of Chinese electric car makers are all trying to fake it until one of them makes it and the money spigot keeping them afloat will eventually get turned off at some point.[0] Good luck keeping that flashy EV running when the company goes bust. [0] https:/…

Amazing you feel that EVs are somehow more maintenance than ICEs. There exist EVs that have never had any manufacturer/dealer input since the day they rolled off the lot. Tesla/Nio are a bad examples - many EVs were built to be sold and essentially ignored by the manufacturer.

After that EV company goes out of business, how are you going to replace that bespoke {$random_part} that broke? Any Fisker Ocean owners want to chime in?[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Ocean

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

#48

Post by Tagbert »

rapsey wrote: post #20
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.

[flagged]

that has changed drastically recently. Big drops in sales in EU.

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

#49

Post by thomassmith65 »

morkalork wrote: post #21
formerly_proven wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one graph that basically predicts which countries are going to fail and which are going to prevail. It's the graph that shows how many people in the "doing things" age bracket a country has. Compare these: (germany) https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=276&type=Probabilis... (alternatively, Europe as a whole) https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=908&type=Probabilis... (Japan) https://population.un.org…

Canada doesn't feel like it's winning despite what the graph says*. Bringing in tons of working-aged immigrants has caused housing (and other living) costs to explode, which in turn has lead to less people having children, which leads to more immigration to fill the gap and the whole thing has been spiraling. Not fun at all. * https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=124&type=Probabilis...

Immigration is no excuse for the Canadian housing shortage. Canada is one of the world's largest land masses, and - even in its South - mainly uninhabited.

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

#50

Post by numpad0 »

This merger deal was a strange one. Honda CEO on stage wasn't sure why he was there, unnamed Nissan exec reportedly remarked "good riddance" to the deal falling through, ex-Nissan Foxconn exec expressing interest and Foxconn CEO eventually declining through the press, and so on.

Whoever was pushing it for whatever reason, basically none of involved parties were interested in it, other than that everyone agreed that hypothetically combining Nissan and Honda would create some accumulated capitals.

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