Toyota will cut its production capacity in Japan by more than 10 percent to some 3.1 million units by 2014, if The Nikkei [sub] is correctly informed. Read More >

Honda is mining for rare earth in unusual places: In cars.

Honda has been extracting rare earth metals from used nickel-metal hydride batteries since April. Today, the company announced it will begin reusing the extracted metals before the end of 2012. Read More >

Guess which car company did profit the most from Greece’s weekend elections. It’s Mazda. Mazda’s stock was up 6 percent in Tokyo today.

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There is an unusual exhibitor at the International Tokyo Toy Show: Toyota. The company shows a grown-up toy car. The car seats 3 children up to 4 feet tall. It has an engine. It drives. Being a toy, it can be dismantled and put together in many different ways. Twist a few knobs, and the car converts from a retro sedan to an offroadish buggy. There is another turn: the toy is supposed to turn on kids to cars. Read More >

In Japan, drivers of Nissan’s all-electric Leaf plant trees while they drive. Nissan started a Zero Emission Fund. Carbon credits are paid into this fund by converting the CO2 emissions prevented by individual Leaf owners in Japan. Read More >

When we wrote about Mitsubishi’s electric attack on the hill at Pike’s Peak, Toyota did not want to confirm rumors that  WRC rally driver Fumio Nutahara would join the race on Toyota’s behalf in a TMG EV P001, the same that set a new electric lap record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. They were right. The rumor was off by a digit. Read More >

Hybrids and minivehicles continue to top Japan’s list of best-selling cars in May. With 20,789 units sold, Toyota’s Prius is leading the list now for the 12^th month in a row. Hot on its heels is Toyota’s Aqua, better known in the U.S. as Prius C.  Only supply constraints at Toyota can keep the compact and affordable hybrid from taking the top spot.     Read More >

According to Automotive News [sub] and other media reports, the UAW is trying again to unionize Nissan’s Canton, Miss,, plant. A rally was held over the weekend. It is hard to believe that the UAW is serious, given the fact that it had tried two times, and failed two times. Read More >

Dongfeng-Nissan President Kimiyasu Nakamura watches Yao Bin, Huang Kai Fong, and Ye Lei

Yesterday, Nissan’s affable China president Kimiyasu Nakamura brought a Chinese delegation home to Yokohama, to explain to a largely skeptical Japanese press why Nissan had started a new brand in China with joint venture partner Dongfeng.  The brand goes by the name of Venucia. Nissan is not the only one doing that. Nearly every foreign joint venture partner in China either has established a Chinese brand in China, or is intensively thinking about it. Read More >

The Japanese car market that has been on a multi-month winning streak could be slowing down quite soon. The reason: The record run on new cars also ran down the government’s subsidy budget in record time. The Japanese government currently is paying a bounty to everybody who buys an environmentally friendly (read: most of them) new car. Thought to last through September, the subsidy-kitty now is expected to be empty by the end of July, The Nikkei [sub] reports. Read More >

Managers of premium auto brands keep asking themselves (and sometime me): “What is the secret of Audi’s success?” 30 years ago, Audi had an image worse than Opel. Last April, Audi outsold Bavarian rival BMW for the first time on a global basis. These days, any large automaker that has a luxury division seeks to emulate Audi’s success. Now, Nissan’s Infiniti could be one step closer to getting its hands in Audi’s elusive secret sauce. They hired one of Audi’s key men. Read More >

After four years in the reds, Mazda is trimming its workforce. Mazda will cut a quarter of its sales management staff in Europe and the U.S., in the current fiscal, The Nikkei [sub] heard while checking up on a press release outlining organizational and personnel changes at the Hiroshima carmaker. Read More >

Domestic sales of new cars, trucks and buses in Japan rose 66.4% from a year earlier in May, data provided by Japanese industry groups show. Read More >

Two weeks ago, I covered the arrival of the 11^th generation Corolla in Japan. In Japan, the sedan is called Corolla Axio, the station wagon variant is called the Corolla Fielder. My report caused consternation amongst some readers who do not expect the arrival of the new Corolla before 2014. Instead of simply accepting that TTAC is ahead of its times, some readers ordered me to do better research. Your wish being my command (this time,) I went back to the scene of the alleged research crime to sit down with the car’s creator, Toyota Chief Engineer Hiroya Fujita. I asked him to explain to the Best and Brightest the birds and the bees of the new Corolla.

I also drove the car around the block a few times. Read More >

In the days and weeks after March 11 2011, when a giant fist wiped out large swaths of Japan’s northeastern coast, and sent the power grid into a near-coma from which the Japanese patient has yet to recover, electric and hybrid vehicles were pressed into a new mission as emergency power supplies. People in the stricken areas used the batteries of their Toyota Estima hybrid minivan, or the much bigger battery of the Nissan Leaf, as a power source for cell phones and laptops when the regular power was out.  Ever since, Japanese became infatuated with the idea of rigging a car to a house – to power the house, if needed. One year later, houses are ready to take charge from a car. Read More >