Just-in-time auto industry news and analysis
DailyKanban’s Bertel Schmitt is headed to Beijing for the auto show, and will not be posting daily news briefs for the next few days while stuck behind the Great Firewall. While he is away gathering the latest news from the world’s largest car market, you can stay up to date on the latest by following E.W. Niedermeyer on Twitter.
The Ise Grand Shrine, dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu, is the holiest shrine of the Shinto religion. Every 20 years, people tear it down. Then, they build it new, all from wood, without a single nail. They have been doing this for around 1,300 years. Instead of preserving a single structure, the original design, and most of all the skill to build, are preserved from the eroding effects of time. “Its secret isn’t heroic engineering or structural overkill, but rather cultural continuity,” writes the Long Now Foundation. Now, Toyota does the same with cars.
The western world may be fascinated by electrified luxury cars carrying the marques of Tesla, BMW, Audi and a number of exotic upstarts, but the true EV revolution seems to be finally happening in the developing markets of Asia, where zero emission vehicles are needed the most. French automaker Renault SA wants to be part of the real EV revolution, if reports in UK media are correct.
At the inauguration of Renault’s new Chinese plant, built together with joint venture partner Dongfeng in Wuhan, a city in China’s central Hubei province, Renault’s CEO Carlos Ghosn hinted at a future line of “cheap and frugal” electric vehicles targeted at the Chinese market in big numbers.
Last week, Toyota announced that it would turn Daihatsu into a fully-owned division. Yesterday, the carmaker said it would ditch its Scion brand. This morning, Toyota presented in Tokyo a new corporate identity for its GAZOO racing stable. The events are connected.
The ditching of Scion caused much handwringing stateside. In the rest of the world, it could hardly matter. No wonder: Scion was primarily a U.S. exercise, with a little late blooming into Canada.
I wasn’t surprised by the announcement. More in Forbes
The first installment of the “How Volkswagen Really Blew It” mini-series was a dissection of the convenient myth that dieselgate prevented Volkswagen from finally becoming world’s largest automaker. As the center of its “Strategy 2018,” Volkswagen had targeted that title since 2009, and in the first part of 2015, it looked as good as won. Six months later, the strategy has been scrapped, and VW appears to be farther removed from world domination than ever before.
The true reason for the defeat wasn’t dieselgate, but that Volkswagen dropped the ball in China. This episode will try to connect many dots for a true picture of what happened, and what did not happen, in China, and in Germany.
Photoshopped
Sales of electric vehicles in China made headlines last year after the world’s largest car market China supposedly also became the world’s largest market for electric vehicles. According to news coming out of China, many of these sales were as real as a Gucci bag in Beijing’s notorious Yashow Market before it was cleaned up, and then killed.
The new year did not bring a change to the current downtrend in Japanese auto sales. Registrations across all segments were found down 4.6%, once data reported by various industry associations were consolidated. Again, the market was dragged down by continued weakness among a Japanese peculiarity, mini vehicles.
Today, rumors that Toyota Motor Corp. might be planning a tie-up with Suzuki rattled the relative tranquility of Tokyo’s auto scene. Suzuki, and Toyota through its Daihatsu subsidiary, are the leading players in Japan’s idiosyncratic “kei car,” or mini vehicle market. So why should you care whether one maker of alleged cars powered by a pint-sized 0.6 liter engine covets another?
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