Toyota’s decision to suspend production and sales in North America of eight recalled models is sending shock waves through seismically sensitized Japan . Tokyo’s Nikkei [sub], usually not prone to sensationalist reporting and strong language, says today that “the fiasco is likely to have unfortunate consequences for the automaker’s image and earnings.”
According to the Nikkei, the eight models recalled for sticking accelerator pedals accounted for about 60 percent of Toyota’s North American sales last year. The production freeze will affect five North American plants. “A prolonged halt would inevitably influence Toyota’s bottom line,” warned an analyst at one major securities firm.
According to the Nikkei, “it is rare for an automaker to suspend production and sales because of a recall.” A Toyota spokesperson pointed out that this is not the first time for the company to make such a move. However, they acknowledged that the scale this time is unusually large. (Read More…)
Opel finally has a restructuring plan. Opel CEO Nick Reilly announced the good news this morning, says Automobilwoche [sub]. “All we need to do is to come to a final agreement with the unions and the works council. I hope, this will happen within the next two or three weeks,” said Reilly. I there a doctor in the house? We have a serious case of relentless optimism. (Read More…)
Here is an interesting facet of the “the Chinese car market is bigger than the American car market” meme:
In 2009, Japanese automakers have, for the first time, built more cars in China than in the U.S. reports the Nikkei [sub]. Says the paper: “Of the eight Japanese passenger carmakers, six manufacture vehicles in China. Their aggregate Chinese output came to roughly 2.25 million units in 2009, exceeding the 2.1 million produced in the U.S.”
Which pours cold water on the often voiced theories that people base their car choices on ethnic prejudice. Japanese people are not necessarily hugely popular in China. Japanese cars are. (Read More…)
The Japanese press is making a big to-do out of the combined 2009 sales of Volkswagen and Suzuki. Or rather out of the fact that the two together sold more than Toyota. „Suzuki-VW Beats Toyota In Global Sales In ’09” headlines The Nikkei, as if the two would be one company.
That the two of them could easily crush Toyota is no news to TTAC readers. When we announced the VW-Suzuki nuptials on Dec 9, 2009, we said: “Suzuki has an output of 2.36 million units a year; added to VW’s sales, Toyota would be toast.”
The Nikkei did the adding, and writes: (Read More…)
How about this for a world upside down: Instead of producing foreign cars in China, the Chinese will produce a foreign car, developed in China, in a foreign country. Such will be the case for the MG6. In a way.
China’s SAIC will manufacture its self-developed MG6-series sedan at its U.K. plant and sell the sedans across the European Union by the end of the year, SAIC’s chairman said to Reuters.(Read More…)
On Sunday, Tokyo’s Nikkei worried aloud that Toyota’s recall may snowball into Europe. The ball is rolling: Today, the Nikkei reports that Toyota “expects to recall roughly 2.0 million vehicles in Europe to fix defective gas pedals.”
The Nikkei’s source is “a person familiar with the matter .“ Because Toyota is still working out which cars exactly need to go to the shop, “it’s unclear when the recall will be formally announced, the person said.” (Read More…)
Want to move to Shanghai to cash in on the Chinese car boom? Want to drive a car in Shanghai? Better bring a lot of money.
Prices for a license plate in Shanghai rose to at two year high in the year’s first plate auction, Shanghai Daily reports. The average price of a private car license rose to US$5,617. A new QQ goes for as little as $4,100. (Read More…)
On the back of a 45 percent growth that propelled Chinese car sales to 13.6m in 2009, and faced with a shortage of cars that doesn’t allow them to feed China’s ravenous appetite for even more cars, Chinese automakers are racing to build more plants. The combined capacity of the 10 largest players is expected to balloon from around 12 million units in 2009 to a breathtaking 21 million in 2012, today’s Nikkei [sub] reports.
Today’s Nikkei [sub] says that the latest Toyota recall “is seen as a major dent in the side of the leading Japanese automaker’s reputation as a builder of reliable automobiles.” (Read More…)
A lot of bandwidth is wasted in the blogosphere about how closed the Japanese car market supposedly is to foreign imports. Which of course is baloney. Paul Niedermeyer debunked the propaganda, and said: “Want to import cars to Japan? It’s one of the easiest countries to do so.“
In case people have not really gotten it, The Nikkei [sub] has drawn them a picture. It painstakingly lists how many cars were made by Japanese manufacturers at home and abroad. It shows how many cars were exported, and how many were imported. (Read More…)
Now that Japan has said kankei nai ne (who cares, not worth the trouble) and opened their cash for clunkers program to American imports, even if they did not go through mandatory homologation, and even if they weren’t rated by the Japanese government to get 35.5 mpg or better, which car is the first to qualify? You are looking at it – very closely. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a … (Read More…)
The German paper Rheinische Post runs an interesting op-ed piece today. Headlined: “Opel fights its demise,” the article concludes that Opel most likely won’t make it:
Opel CEO Nick Reilly is facing a dilemma. Even before the outbreak of the economic crisis, Opel was confronted with an overcapacity of 20 percent. The Abwrackprämie being behind us, sales will crater. This creates extra pressure to eliminate more jobs. If Reilly implements his restructuring program, then he will have to fight the opposition of the workers. For once, it is easy to put a number to this: €265m a year. The workers wanted to forgo this sum – if Reilly won’t shut down any plants. Now Reilly is €265m short – and has to cut more jobs. At that point, the governments, on who’s support Reilly counts, will call it quits. Whether Opel is kept alive with tax money, with funds from the parent, or with money from the workforce: an artificial respiration of a company is ultimately more expensive than anticipated. And it is almost never successful.
Representatives Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Dan Boren (D- Oklahoma) are tired of Obama’s punitive tariff on Chinese tires. They called for a government report on the economy-wide effects of the measure, Reuters reports.
“I am concerned that the administration’s tire tax will cost us jobs in the United States and raise prices for tires for hardworking Americans,” Brady said. (Read More…)
A report about the automotive industry in the BRIC countries, released by the Boston Consulting Group, throws cold water on the low cost production story:
“In manufacturing, companies are generally paying a premium of 5 to 15 percent to manufacture in the BRIC countries, mainly because of diseconomies of scale and higher quality-assurance costs than they incur in the more developed markets; only in Brazil do they actually save money on manufacturing.”
Ooops.
Apart from this astounding revelation, the rest of the report is full of platitudes and comes 20 years too late: (Read More…)
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