A few weeks ago, a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese coast guard vessel ( or vice versa, depending on who’s telling  the story.) The crew was sent home, the captain was arrested. This happened near some uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea, called Diaoyu islands in China and Senkaku islands in Japan. The rocks are under Japanese administration, but are also claimed by (to make matters even more complicated) China AND Taiwan. The islands sit on top of a huge natural gas field, to make matters really interesting. To get the captain home and to make a point, China has been ratcheting up the rhetoric. China is looking for a pressure point that hurts the Japanese. First, they tried to cut off the stream of Chinese tourists that go shopping in Japan. That didn’t work.

Now, China may have found something that seriously messes with traffic in Japan. Read More >

Now that GM is thinking about trademarking “range anxiety,” the only choice left to Nissan is to do something about range anxiety. (Just in case GM is successful with their trademark application, we’ll call it Arrival Angst™ … remember, you’ve seen it here first, just in case we’ll have to call you as a witness.)  According to The Nikkei [sub], Nissan “will offer buyers of its Leaf electric car a service to ease drivers’ dread of having the batteries run out while on the road.” (See, even The Nikkei is staying away from “range anxiety.” Alright, let’s trademark Distance Dread™ also.) So how will that service work? Read More >

There used to be a time when Japan exported cars. Now, they export car factories. Nissan has been on the forefront of this movement for a while. Now comes their biggest export deal: Nissan plans to double its capacity in China by 2012, writes Reuters. That would bring their annual capacity in China to 1.2 million units. Read More >

Oil and water supposedly don’t mix. Like a lot of conventional wisdom, this one is totally bogus. Without water, we wouldn’t have any oil. What do you think is in a supertanker when it goes back empty to Saudi Arabia or Prudhoe Bay? Water. It’s needed for ballast. Without it, the tanker would just pop out of the — water. About 60 million barrels of ballast water is shipped around the globe and is thrown away each day. Now, the Japanese have a better idea: They want to ship waste-water to oil-producing countries in the Middle East, and exchange it for crude oil. Say what? Read More >

Since the recalls,  hearings, etc. it’s been difficult to gauge what effect this had on Toyota. On the one hand, sales are falling in the US, but globally, sales are up. Looking at it one way, Toyota had to raise their incentives to shift metal; looking at it another their incentives are still below market average and nowhere near GM, Ford and Chrysler. Companies that are committed to lowering their incentives. Well, here’s another story to further confuse us. Read More >

Germany doesn’t have an EV yet, but they already have a standard fort he EV plug. I would expect no less from my countrypersons. Before they do anything new, they first create a standard for it. Audi, BMW, Daimler, Porsche and Volkswagen have agreed to support a connector system for the charging of electric vehicles based on IEC standard 62196-2. The five German vendors invited utility providers and other OEMs to join the group. Given Volkswagen’s  monstrous market share in Europe, there won’t be much other choice for the juice. Read More >

Despite rising global sales and recording good profits ( Ray LaHood’s best attempts just aren’t good enough), the bad news keeps coming in for Toyota. Recently, Toyota lost a preliminary hearing that ruled they hid safety evidence (I think it’s safe to say that Dimitrios Biller is off Toyota’s Christmas card list). Now their brand has taken an official  hit. Read More >

Despite the worse than lackluster uptake of EVs in China, and disappointing sales of hybrids in the Middle Kingdom, companies and the government are still convinced that electric cars are the wave of the future. Toyota will join the fray and will introduce an electric vehicle in China, Vice Chairman Katsuaki Watanabe told The Nikkei [sub]. While announcing that Toyota will enter the electric vehicle market in 2012, Watanabe said, “we’re favorably considering a move into China as well.” It’s not that the market is screaming for plug-ins, or even hybrids. Read More >

Hyundai demands its fair share of a market that doesn’t exist. The Koreans are stepping up the development of EVs. Two days ago, Hyundai held a test drive event in the suburbs of Seoul. The invitees could drive a (blue is the new green) Hyundai BlueOn EV. The Nikkei [sub], who was invited, reports: Read More >

If you want to offer hybrid cars, but don’t have the money / time / run rate / wherewithal to do it yourself, who’re gonna call? Toyota. But who would have imagined that haughty Daimler picked up the phone, dialed 0081, and said: “Let’s talk?” Daimler considers joining the growing list of automakers that source their hybrid systems from Toyota City.  Toyota is in talks to provide technology and core components for hybrid vehicles to Daimler, after having been approached by the Germans, says The Nikkei [sub]. Read More >

The heavy handed attempts to put the Japanese car industry in its place were totally unnecessary. Japan is perfectly capable of doing this all by themselves, with the help of the Godzilla-strength yen.  Over the last issues, we have been chronicling the exodus of Japanese carmakers to lower cost countries with softer currencies. A trend even today’s yen intervention by the BOJ won’t stop. The last one we would have suspected of hopping on that bandwagon to cheaper shores was boutique carmaker Mitsuoka. But the purveyor of fine retro romance is also outta here. Read More >

Lawyers would have to do pro bono work, or subsist on doing divorces and writing wills, would it not be for Toyota. Toyota’s contribution to the world of jurisprudence is immeasurable. They are in a drawn-out lawsuit against their own (former) lawyer. And they are named in more than 300 federal and state lawsuits including proposed class actions over allegations that the vehicles suddenly accelerated and couldn’t be stopped. Toyota is trying to put the brakes on that. Read More >

Here is one way to find out whether a company is serious about its long term plans for a given product: Find out whether they worry about what to do with their products after they are dead. That usually separates the serious players from the wannabes. Word reaches us from The Nikkei [sub] that Nissan has teamed up with the venerable zaibatsu Sumitomo, and established a joint venture to recycle electric car batteries. Read More >

EVs are also called “Yes but cars.” As in “Yes, but the power needs to come from somewhere. Usually from a dirty plant with a huge smokestack..” Several companies don’t want to hear that anymore and develop a smart grid that powers houses and cars entirely from renewable energy sources. At least that’s the plan. Read More >

When the high Yen drove Nissan out of Japan to Thailand, and to importing their Nissan March (elsewhere known as the Micra) from the  Land of Smiles back to the Land of the Rising Sun, many thought this a daring, maybe even suicidal experiment. Will the notoriously nitpicky Nipponese buyer buy it? Or will “the first move by a Japanese carmaker to export a mainstay model to the home market,” as The Nikkei [sub] called it, be a resounding dud? Either the Japanese are changing, or Nissan pulled-off the impossible. Read More >