Nissan and Honda Agree To Merge (msn.com) 93
Honda sketched plans for a drawn-out deal that amounts to a takeover of Nissan in all but name, as Japan's automakers struggle to keep up in an increasingly competitive global car industry. From a report: The two announced a tentative agreement Monday to set up a joint holding company that will aim to list shares in August 2026. While their executives called the transaction a merger, Honda will take the lead in forming the new entity and nominate a majority of its directors.
Nissan's partner Mitsubishi may also participate in the deal. Honda and Nissan both are having trouble contending with ascendant domestic automakers in China, which surpassed Japan as the world's largest car-exporting nation last year and is pulling further ahead in 2024. Honda Chief Executive Officer Toshihiro Mibe spoke to the level of level of difficulty ahead for the companies when he said during a press conference that their goal is to be competitive by 2030.
Nissan's partner Mitsubishi may also participate in the deal. Honda and Nissan both are having trouble contending with ascendant domestic automakers in China, which surpassed Japan as the world's largest car-exporting nation last year and is pulling further ahead in 2024. Honda Chief Executive Officer Toshihiro Mibe spoke to the level of level of difficulty ahead for the companies when he said during a press conference that their goal is to be competitive by 2030.
Mitsubishi is joining the sinking ship (Score:2)
This mornings news says that Mitsubishi is joining this merger.
This will either add weight to the sinking or ? help it float?
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I for one, welcome our new HondaNissanMitsubishi overlords!
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Will they smush together car names such as the Thundercougarfalconbird [fandom.com]?
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Honnibishi!
Re: Mitsubishi is joining the sinking ship (Score:2)
I wonder why Renault isn't mentioned . I guess because Renault-Nissan was already a thing.
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In the US market, merging has-beens usually just makes a bigger has-been. Maybe Japan is different? We'll see...
Re:Mitsubishi is joining the sinking ship (Score:5, Interesting)
Honda not a has-been (Score:2)
Honda is hardly a has-been, it's second only to Toyota In the small SUV space [goodcarbadcar.net]. The CR-V has been popular for a while.
Now Nissan, there I'd agree it's kind of a has-been. I never hear anyone talking about them anymore.
Re: Honda not a has-been (Score:2)
Nissan was a pioneer in EVs with the Leaf, but unfortunately did not follow through with a more diversified EV portfolio. Now they have been left behind.
None of these Japanese car companies merging or not, has made a serious effort in EVs. That's undoubtedly why some are struggling.
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It depends on if they do it smartly. For example, they should keep all the Honda engineers, as they build quality products that last. Nissan does not, and has not for some time.
However, Honda's styling has always been super conservative with a few exceptions, where Nissan is (for better or worse) more likely to take a risk on style and design. Sometimes that works out, and sometimes you get the Nissan Cube.
If they can keep the reliability up (and drastically increase reliability for Nissan) then this cou
Re: Mitsubishi is joining the sinking ship (Score:2)
The only part that Nissan is worse at than Honda is the transmission. Their CVTs are trash. Everything else is fine, albeit not spectacular like it used to be. Yes the corrosion protection has gone downhill but have you seen a Honda lately?
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They need to look at the Ratio Zero transmission, which is a geared CVT. It doesn't provide reverse, but it can do neutral to infinity. This ensures there is actual torque that can be handled by the CVT, and because the CVT is all gears and not belts, it should last significantly longer than the CVTs.
There is always going EV + range extender as well, which greatly simplifies the drivetrains.
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Mitsubishi sank a while ago. It's just the bales of money that keep them afloat. Ditto Nissan. The details I've heard make me believe that this is really a takeover by Honda disguised as a merger.
Repeating the weak joke from the other story, but we need this merger like a hole in the head patched by an AI. (Where "we" means anyone in the world.)
Better jokes are surely available for the laughing.
Will the history be worth a laugh? Many years ago the Japanese government decided there were too many companies in
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The cars Mitsubishi sell in Australia (the Triton pickup truck, Pajaro Sport 4x4 and Outlander SUV in particular) are actually decent cars.
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Is it just Mitsubishi's car division that is involved in this? They make a lot of other stuff besides cars.
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Probably
Nissan (Score:5, Interesting)
Nissan being the Chrysler of Japan, will their quality improve or will Honda's tank as a result? I think Honda has been slipping lately in regards to quality.
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Would be pity. My entity of Honda Jazz, purchased over 20 years ago brand new, was impressive hit of vehicle engineering. Still a keeper. Just bodywork could address slightly better our European challenges of weather. Layer or more of anti-corrosion purpose could be very meaningful. Anyway, Japanese engineering was top notch.
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My question exactly. Hondas are high quality, Nissans are at the bottom of the heap. However, that may be because of penny-pinching.
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Remember what happened to Mercedes Benz when they merged with Chrysler? Remember what was *supposed* to happen?
History will repeat I think.
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The T1N Dodge Sprinter wasn't a bad vehicle. The 5-banger was odd, but if one fixed the turbo resonator with a metal one, it could run on almost any jungle juice you could imagine (B100, etc.)
Now the newer ones are a different story. Just like any Mercedes, it runs very well... when it runs. However, when it has issues, you pay Mercedes prices for parts and Mercedes prices for service.
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I'm thinking the same thing. Of all the car makers, the most reliable I've had are Hondas, by far. Honda just knows how to do vehicles "right".
I hope quality improves. In general, Japanese brands are known for their reliability [1], so Mitsubishi and Nissan being under the Honda umbrella may not be a bad thing, especially if car technologies like good hybrid drivetrains transfer over. It may also make a useful product line, for example a Nissan Titan with a hybrid system similar to the Ford F-150 PowerB
How did they F up the lead? (Score:1)
Honda used to be hot. What the F did they do wrong? Somehow Toyota let them eat their lunch. Toyota's are arguably slightly more reliable than Hondas, but Toyota's are butt-ugly, making it a wash.
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The old saying was if your Honda has a problem keep driving it and it will fix itself.
Then they stopped caring about quality.
I have a Pilot with significant unibofy corrosion at only ten years old.
The twenty year old Toyota is fine in the same conditions.
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Yep, they lack the most on body. The rest of my Jazz 2003 is of beautiful design and engineering.
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Had a 2004 Pilot EX(? top of the line trim).
The driver's window kept falling off its internal support, and failing. Plus the stripping on the rear window fell out to some extent.
Got rid of it in 2016 (logic was "Paid for covers a multitude of sins").
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Given that the multiple repair jobs were done BY THE DEALER, I'm going to assume yes.
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Re:How did they F up the lead? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bean counters. They started listening to accountants on ways to save a few cents here and there.
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They've certainly made some efforts and a few sparks in the last couple decades, but not like it was.
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Didn't help that the designs were shifted to focus on some futuristic cyber-punk aesthetic while their price put them in the realm of more conservative (i.e. older) car buyers.
Re: How did they F up the lead? (Score:3)
This is exactly right. Honda tried to attract younger buyers with styling borrowed from The Transformers, but kept the prices too high to appeal to the market attracted by that styling.
Nissan basically stayed true to their roots but made a series of terrible CVTs that had people staying away from their vehicles in droves. Everything else about the vehicles is still at least as good as a Honda, and the handling is still superior, but most people can't drive worth shit anyway so that is wasted on the public.
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And for everyone saying these are Japanese companies You're being naive if you think the United States doesn't have any say in what other countries do, let alone what other countries do with businesses that have that big of a footprint in their country...
The US can't directly stop the merger, but they can prevent the imports from that company after the merger. I guess that's basically what you said...
Re: So another significant reduction in competitio (Score:1)
Their vehicles sold here are almost all built here or in Mexico... with whom we have a trade agreement, which was signed by Trump, and is virtually identical to the prior trade agreement.
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Their vehicles sold here are almost all built here or in Mexico... with whom we have a trade agreement, which was signed by Trump, and is virtually identical to the prior trade agreement.
Where they're built doesn't matter if the parent company is no longer allowed to do business in your country.
You know we can file lawsuits (Score:2)
Not that we're going to. Unless the Japanese have the common sense to stop this it's probably going through. I don't think the state attorney general have enough power to stop it.
It's okay it's not as if the price of vehicles has been going up drastically over the years or that we aren't close to a crisis point where rank and file emplo
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Look at this graph [asahi.com]. The auto export industry of China is eating Japan's lunch. This is that.
On a smaller scale, Tesla is a recent entrant but had the best-selling model in the world in 2023. Well, who's making room for that?
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And this process is echoing what happened a couple of decades ago when Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Mitsubishi, etc., were all ascendant and eating the US automakers' lunch.
After China, it will be Viet Nam, perhaps with other, currently minor East Asian players, or maybe South Africa.
Ever it was thus, as each commercial power-house becomes staid and sclerotic, and thus vulnerable to being out-competed.
Why don't these Japanes companies (Score:1)
Re:Why don't these Japanes companies (Score:4, Informative)
Nissan Leaf
Nissan Ariya
Subaru Solterra
Honda Prologue
Toyota bZ4X
Mitsubishi i-MiEV
Re: Why don't these Japanes companies (Score:1)
Honda prologue is a rebadged GM product. Poor fuckers have been reduced to that. No wonder they want to buy Nissan, the only Japanese automaker to do an EV timely. They did fuck that one up, but I hear the Ariya is good, so there's that.
Re:Why don't these Japanes companies (Score:4, Interesting)
The Solterra and bZ4X are the same car, a joint venture, and is absolute dogshit. It would have been a mediocre EV in 2014 but for the year it was released it's embarrassing... especially for Toyota who has decades of experience in electrified drivetrains but apparently couldn't be bothered to use any of that knowledge.
The i-MiEV has been completely out of production for a few years now, and for the past decade was only available in limited markets (e.g. basically Japan only). It's also disappointing in the specifications with under 100 mi range from the factory... again forgivable in 2009 but it was never improved upon.
The Prologue EV has gotten good reviews but is not competitively priced for what you get, so it's not super popular.
Only Nissan has any credibility as an EV manufacturer because they were the first (in partnership with Renault) to offer a mass-market and reasonably affordable EV. However despite 15 years of making them the LEAF didn't get a liquid cooled battery until 2025 and still has a Chademo port. That's a major miss so despite being very well priced they are not going to be first choice to anyone who understands what those words mean (especially re: Chademo port).
Japanese and European brands have fumbled the automotive market in almost exactly the same way that the US did decades ago. Now it's China's turn.
=Smidge=
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especially for Toyota who has decades of experience in electrified drivetrains but apparently couldn't be bothered to use any of that knowledge
Yep I've always found this deeply weird. The Prius motor is underpowered for an EV, but only by a factor of 2. It's just bizarre that Toyota didn't double the size of the motor, and drop the engine. They had a serviceable EV more or less ready to go in terms of the hard won knowledge of not making one that breaks. And today they have a plug in Prius with a decent mot
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Re: Why don't these Japanes companies (Score:2)
The prologue is not even a Honda. It's badge engineered GM. They were too cheap to even replace the controls so it feels like one, too, alienating Honda customers.
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In a way, it would be nice to see Chinese cars on US soil. The only ones are rebadged Buicks and Cadillacs like the Buick Envision. Just because everywhere else in the world is getting that choice, and something like the Chinese Yangwang U8 just puts anything from the US to shame in the SUV department. Even the BYD Shark puts almost all US pickups to shame.
IIRC, the US has the most limited and overpriced car selection in the world, where companies like VW refuse to sell vehicles that are useful or what i
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It’s really striking how Nissan squandered the early mover advantage it had with the Leaf. It absolutely could have built out a usable tech base off that, and it ought to have been able to reduce costs faster than rivals. But it never happened
Re: Why don't these Japanes companies (Score:2)
The Leaf was rightly panned for its trash battery, so Nissan could not parlay that into additional sales.
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That's not "making EVs", that's doing the bare minimum to qualify for sale in some markets. I like the Toyota example the best. A single car. One. Brand new to the market. Also you put it in the list twice since the Subaru Solterra is the same car. In the meantime the likes of VW has had more than 5 EVs in its line-up for 5+ years now.
The Japanese are woefully behind in the BEV market. None of the companies are in any shape or form taking EVs seriously, even if they do have one car in their lineup (and borr
Re:Why not EV's? (Score:2)
Japan co's think in the shorter term hybrids & plug-in hybrids are the better bet, and hydrogen better in the long-term, at least in metropolitan areas. In Japan hydrogen is expanding, and they expect to be the trying ground for hydrogen tech.
Hydrogen is more efficient than EV, but requires the fueling infrastructure to be viable. In heavily populated countries it might fly. In spread-out countries like the US and Russia it may not be a good fit, though, as it's more feasible to use the existing electri
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I am trying to guess what you mean when you say H2 is more efficient. Maybe speed of refuelling? It’s all I can really imagine. Obviously, H2 is notoriously inefficient as a means of storing energy for a car compared to a BEV. Storage and piping it is also incredibly expensive and difficult, because it’s so embrittling and prone to leakage. (I always think of a Heinlein phrase along the lines of helium being “so agile it will migrate straight through a rubber seal” from Have Space Su
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If you really need the "drive to special place and pay some to fill your car" option then battery swap stations are better than hydrogen fueling stations. The
Re:Why not EV's? (Score:4, Informative)
> In Japan hydrogen is expanding, and they expect to be the trying ground for hydrogen tech.
Sales of Hydrogen vehicles in Japan are down 83% since 2021, selling just 422 vehicles nation wide in 2023. There's less than ten thousand HFCVs in the country despite being on sale since 2014. That's not what I'd call "expanding."
> Hydrogen is more efficient than EV
It takes roughly double the upstream energy input ("well to wheels") to drive a HFCV a given distance compared to an EV. That's not what I'd call "efficient."
> but requires the fueling infrastructure to be viable
Tesla, love 'em or hate 'em, had the good sense to invest heavily in EV infrastructure to support their product. To this day their supercharger network is the #1 (and IMHO the only) selling point. That's fading as other manufacturers are gaining access, though.
But Toyota, who is the biggest investor in HFCVs of the bunch, has invested nothing into fueling infrastructure for their product. None. Hydrogen in Japan was stillborn and never had a chance.
=Smidge=
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The real hope is this merger of Nissan and Honda can break Toyota's control of the Japanese auto industry and allow them the to refocus on what the market actually wants and to allow them to compe
Re: Why not EV's? (Score:2)
We already tried hydrogen here in California and it already failed. Japan is delusional about it. It will never make sense. They want it to because they do not have the materials to make batteries on their little island. It never will.
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I've been eyeing a used Kia Niro but noticed that the Polestar 2 is almost the same price used. Twice the horsepower and the battery has an 8 year 100,000 mile factory warranty. It's so tempting.
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Don't fear the Chinese either. As a Polestar 2 owner myself I can vouch for the fact that the quality of the car is just like any other, actually better than some that I've driven.
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What part of the country are you in? I can find used Niros all day for $14k to $16k, the cheapest used 2021 Polestar 2 cars start at $30k
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You're misreading those sites. They all state that sales aren't "growing as fast as expected". The slump is only a slump in an upward trendline.
Car makers make money as much as cars and they will build was sells
No they won't. They will dictate to you what you should buy. They will market it as your best option and resist every possible pressure to create a product people themselves choose. The clever car companies follow the market, which is why the same company selling EVs as compliance cars in one country has a huge lineup of them in another country.
What Japan is doing i
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Hybrids (Score:3)
Re: Hybrids (Score:2)
Toyota finally figured out how to make a car handle ok just in time for nobody to care because none of them know how to drive any more, they just point and shoot and let the advanced driving features do the job for them. But they also figured out how to design a non-sports car that doesn't look like dog shit. The newest model of Prius looks spectacular.
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Honda will take the lead in forming the new entity and nominate a majority of its directors.
So Honda is basically acquiring the corpse of Nissan? Let's just hope Nissan didn't just buy Honda with its own money like happened when Boeing acquired the corpse of McDonnell Douglas.
Foxconn was circling Nissan (and looked to have the resources to take control). From other reports, the Japanese government made an offer to Honda (that it could not refuse) in order to keep Nissan Japanese.
ICE (Score:1, Troll)
Japan is still focused on Internal Combustion Engines. Sure they have hybrids, to keep pushing the ICE, and maybe dabbled in EVs - but the main focus is on producing cars with Internal Combustion. Times are changing but Japanese manufacturers are not keeping up.
Re:ICE (Score:4, Interesting)
You should read about Toyota's batteries that are beginning production.
Current Teslas will have very little resale value in only two years.
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Toyota has nothing special, same as everyone in regards to battery tech. I suppose Toyota would need to make EVs that people acre about before it matters, unless Toyota is to stop making cars.
Yes, all EVs will need batteries at some point and future packs from all manufacturers should see improvements. Solid state batteries portend lots of range and fast charging, no one has them in production.
I suspect most Teslas have poor resale now. Never been a fan due to quality issues. It is easy to find pictures of
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Toyota has been saying the same shite about solid state since at least 2009:
https://thedriven.io/2023/07/0... [thedriven.io]
Maybe it will happen one day, but I wouldn’t hold your breath
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Re: ICE (Score:2)
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Meanwhile, Mazda has posted a couple of years of record sales in the US. With ICE cars.
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I wouldn't count the serial hybrid out yet. In places like Europe, where the biggest threat to the electric grid is Russia, not natural disasters, BEVs make sense, just because they have standardized chargers, and solid adoption. However, in the US, power for EVs isn't really guarenteed, and the Bitcoin mining companies as well as the AI companies get first dibs when more gigawatts come online. This is where serial hybrids or BEVs with range extenders come in. Not just to allow people to stop at a gas s
If Nissan and Honda fail to execute the merge (Score:1)
properly, will they crash into each other or will one be run off the road?
Hyped (Score:1)
I really hope Honda is the one who calls the shots (Score:4, Interesting)
I know TFS says it will, but in business trust absolutely no one.
If Nissan gets *any* control whatsoever, no matter how minor, it will be the end of Honda.
And I don't want Honda to go away.
I won't spill a single tear if Nissan dies, tho. They did this to themselves. Why should anyone step up to help them?
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As I noted in my earlier reply, Honda was not such a cooperative company. But maybe it's changed and is about to follow the government guidance the wrong way around?
<sound of flushing>?
Carlos Ghosn to the rescue (Score:2)
What they should do is forgive Ghosn and beg him to come back to make them profitable again.
He ripped out Nissan's cultural and traditional way of doing business and laid off about something like 20,000 workers. He went all management consultant on Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi, but for a while there they all were really profitable. For a while. Then the deep cuts started showing, and none of them were building or innovating anything really exciting. Nissan/Infiniti in the US are seen as the worst current
Oh no (Score:1)
Breaking Toyota's control (Score:2)
When you look at why the Japanese are ignoring what custome