1mo ago

Honda and Nissan announce merger to form world's third largest car company

www.rfi.fr Honda and Nissan announce merger to form world's third largest car company

Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan have announced plans to join forces and form the world’s third-largest automaker by sales as the industry undergoes dramatic changes in its transition away from fossil…

Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan have announced plans to join forces and form the world’s third-largest automaker by sales as the industry undergoes dramatic changes in its transition away from fossil fuels.

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1mo ago

Honda and Nissan announce merger to form world's third largest car company

www.rfi.fr /en/international/20241223-honda-and-nissan-announce-merger-to-form-world-s-third-largest-car-company-japan

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1mo ago

Honda and Nissan announce merger to form world's third largest car company

www.rfi.fr /en/international/20241223-honda-and-nissan-announce-merger-to-form-world-s-third-largest-car-company-japan

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137 comments

Honda is known for quality, and every old Nissan I see falls apart. I hope this doesn’t tank the quality of Honda.
- Quality of basically every automaker has tanked post COVID, including Honda. And the prices are highway robbery too, its all a race to the bottom now.
  
  So car-centrism is even more ✨ terrible ✨ now? Golly, who could've predicted that relying on and enforcing a single industry for most of our transportation might result in rampant enshittification?
  
  Re prices.
  This is what is pissing me off - I'm subsidizing car manufacturers by not being able to buy cheap Chinese cars, yet the assholes focus on expensive trucks I don't need. If I'm socializing their losses - I don't want them building cyber trucks, I want cheap affordable vehicles.
- I don't drive Nissans but a family memebr of mine has forever I don't mind them and haven't seen too many issues, im just glad Mitsubishi isn't part of this.
  
  I worked at a mechanic shop years ago and every Nissan that came in was falling apart, but they were all older 90s ones. Seats that don’t stay up, plastic panels broken and missing, glove boxes opened, latches and knobs broken, etc.
  I owned a Mitsubishi before and it was like a Honda civic but way lower quality. It held up ok except when the brakes didn’t want to work when I really needed them. Yes I rear ended a few times until I decided to SCRAP the car at the junkers.
  I owned several Hondas and they all were good quality (mostly 80-90s and a 2000). Usually basic maintenance it all it needed.
  
  My brother loves his xterra so much he is on his 3rd (first was an accident, second went to the ex in the divorce). I rarely ride in it, but it seems kinda like a rattle trap to me. I dont know how much of that is his abuse and how much is the car.
- My 2018 Honda Accord has been a nightmare, and I stubbornly refuse to replace it until it's 10 years old. I half-wonder if the quality has already started to go downhill.
  From the factory, the air conditioner dumped all of its condensation onto the passenger-seat floorboards. Since then, I've had to get the AC unit replaced twice.
  EVERYTHING rattles in that car -- the seatbelt mounts, the visors, all kinds of stuff inside the front console (maybe inside the ventilation system?), the front defroster bezel, and the trim around the back window. It drives me absolutely bonkers.
  I'd actually been hoping Nissan would get their shit together in regards to their CVT transmissions... because my favorite car over the years was my 2003 Nissan Maxima.
  ...I guess I should see what Mazda has to offer...
  
  Yikes, sorry to hear about your accord! That’s just crazy.
  I stopped caring about cars newer than about 2012 or so, when they all got touch screen info centers that sell the driving data to the insurance companies. Just makes me sick.
  
  My anecdotal experience with Mazdas have been generally really good
  
  I had a 2002 Protege5 for 15 yrs. Besides normal wear items, it was solid. I only sold it because family meant I needed a larger vehicle. I do miss it at times though. Just got a CX-90 for my wife, so here’s hoping we get the same results. I tend to average about 15yrs on a car so far and I’d like to keep that number up.
- I'm sure mergers have improved things, but all the recent meegers I can think of have made thibgs worse. My guess is that it will be a net negative for Honda, although they are dragging their feet hard enough on EVs and hybrids that they were heading down that path anyway.
- I know it's anecdotal..but my 2019 Odyssey has so far needed a lot more work than my 2013 Passat. Considering I got both of them at 1 year old.
  This is completely counter to most expectations.
  
  honda are having a lot more lemons lately, my 2020-ish CRV was a lemon that wouldn't start after a few days. my previous hondas were great but that one (especially how they responded to it) drove me away from the brand for good.
  
  American Passat or euro? My dad's 2012 has been rock solid
- every old Nissan I see falls apart
  That says a lot more about the owners than it does about the vehicles.
  
  I guess, the owners took their cars into the shop to fix (X) and nothing else, even though there was so much wrong they didn’t want it fixed.
- I had a '92 Nissan D21 truck. I bought it in 2015 with 120k miles for $2000 in great condition. Drove it another 150k miles, only needed to replace the starter, shocks and struts, and a battery (with other regular maintenance of course). Sold it two years later for $2000. One of the best trucks I've ever had.
  
  Maybe it was just the models I saw that fell apart, not every Nissan. The only ones I saw that bad were the ones that came into the shop to have something fixed unrelated to all the broken stuff.
- Nissans post-Renault partnership might be questionable in areas. 70s, 80s, 90s Nissan engineering was superior to Honda as far as I'm concerned. I've taken multiple old Datsuns/Nissans north of 300k miles with very few problems.
  
  I still see a lot of Datsuns on the road. Always wanted a little pickup like theirs.

This is a bad idea. As someone comes from a “Honda family”, I drive a Honda because I don’t want a Nissan.
This feels like the quality of Hondas get to drop while the cost of Nissans get to jump. I fail to see how this benefits anyone.
- Alternative take: Honda fucked up by not going the EV route, now they're behind. Nissan built a fuckton of Leafs and probably has at least some decent in-house EV expertise built up. Best case scenario you get good Honda EVs.
  It's probably not going to be the best case scenario, though.
  
  Things aren't always black and white. It could turn out to be an okay intermediate. I'm not too mad about the loss of competition here because there are quite a few new EV makers that are attempting to succeed in the market.
  
  Fun Fact. 1st Gen Nissan Leaf’s have such bad battery capacity that they have no resale value but they are very popular in southeast Alaska where gas prices are high and there really isn’t anywhere to go (they are all islands) so a 60 mile range isn’t a handicap.
  
  That’s fair and that makes sense to me.
- The merger isn't supposed to help consumers. It's to help businesses that are incapable of keeping up and need support. The Japanese government has a history of merging companies together to ensure that they stay competitive. MITI did it in the 70s to Japanese technology companies like Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, etc. most of those are still around today and even leading the industry.
  Again, this isn't to help any consumers.
- No it's not going to be like that. I think they're going to exchange patents and things like that to catch up to the EV markets. The Japanese are very conservative when it comes to technology, believe it or not. Because of the older people being higher in hierarchy. They don't like change and disruption. Meanwhile in Korea and China, things have been moving fast and following the trends.
  
  China is getting tarrifed out of the market, it's really only Hyundai/Kia now to push the envelope at the moment and force competition (for EVs)
- As an owner of a Nissan I am thrilled Honda is bailing them out. I need those spare parts to flow.
- Are you worried that this is like when Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas but the MD businessmen shoved out the engineers who ran Boeing?
  As an aside I didn’t love my Honda but it didn’t require an engine replacement out of warranty like my Nissan did. I appreciated that Nissan did the right thing but it was concerning to need a new engine due to a manufacturing defect.
- They'll probably continue Nissan as the cheapest brand.
  If you want a luxury Honda, you should already just buy Acura.
  
  luxury != quality
  
  They get Mitsubishi in the deal since Nissan is their majority owner, so it will continue to be the budget nameplate most likely.
- We're just going to have to spend the next 20 years researching each model to figure out whether it was made by nissan guys in nissan plants or honda guys in honda plants. It will probably realistically be functionally separated for a long time. Hopefully, everything will settle closer to honda quality.
- Nissan fans?

This is a panic move because the Japanese car industry wasted a whole lot of time and money on hydrogen instead of EVs
- I remember when Physics Girl took Shell money to promote hydrogen powered cars.
  It was very suspicious that they never talked about how the hydrogen was produced.
  
  And certainly never about the price of hydrogen. It's either running the car on fossil fuels with extra steps, or on solar and wind electricity with extra steps. Extra steps cost a lot.
  
  I find her suspicious in general. She sends up some red flags for me, but maybe I'm just being a misogynistic hater without realizing it. Also, she and the Christian military dude (SmarterEveryDay?) have weird chemistry. I've asked YouTube to stop showing me anything from them so I'm not an expert. They both kinda creep me out, I don't know.
- And they still are. Toyota and Honda in particular have been spent billions on FUD and harebrained hydrogen projects and then wondering why China is eating their lunch. Meanwhile the doors are closing for non-EV manufacturers in markets which are going all electric coming up to 2030. Japan's auto industry will probably survive in some form but there could be a lot of casualties.
- Hydrogen is still being developed by everyone, it's just more low key than what Japanese car makers are doing. It's still a much better means than battery is in the long form. Getting it from renewalable ways is what is taking a lot of the wind out of its sails.
  
  Ok, I see misinformation like this on like every social media site now. I didn't know it had made it to Lemmy.
  So, you know that conversion of energy causes energy loss, right? So how is it that converting that energy four times (original source > electricity > hydrogen > electricity > motion) sounds more efficient to you than converting that energy twice (original source > electricity > motion)?
  Especially when you consider that electricity already has a network of well-established, proven, global distribution infrastructure whose transfer loss has been obsessively optimized over the last century, while hydrogen emphatically does not?
  From the point of view of pure physics, it makes more sense to charge up a bunch of batteries and put them on a truck than to put a bunch of fuel cells onto that same truck. And remember, you can make those batteries more convenient by sending the electricity through the grid instead.
  Charging times are quickly decreasing. They'll eventually reach a reasonable parity with gas tank fills, but they'll have become the dominant transportation energy source long before that. The current state of battery technology is the worst that it will ever be, and multiple industries are working together to make them better. Hydrogen pretty much only has wide applications to one industry.
  Would all of this have been true if both technologies were starting from zero? Probably not. But electricity has a hundred year head start over hydrogen in the consumer space, and a lot of money is still being put into it. Plus, it's obviously going to be the eventual winner because physics, so why bother with the transitional source when what we would transition to is already a more mature technology?
  The war is long over, and anyone who pretends otherwise is just ignoring the laws of physics.
  Edit: I recognize that I'm papering over the transfer loss of electricity > battery > electricity. That's because the transfer loss of charging a battery is <10%, while the transfer loss of generating hydrogen is >20%.
  
  No it isn't, batteries are already better than hydrogen and the newest batteries coming out soon from BYD and CATL are going to please the people that want fast charging to be as fast as going to the pump. It's over for hydrogen in cars
  
  Getting it from renewalable ways is what is taking a lot of the wind out of its sails.
  Could just use that wind to generate renewable energy directly....
  They'll probably build hydrogen based hybrid cars lol
  
  The whole point is to get it renewable, otherwise gasoline is even better? Anyway, the race is still on for aviation and heavy freight, and hydrogen/ammonia/methanol would probably have a place there.

What this really is, is the first major OEM casualty from the EV transition.
Nissan was in deep deep trouble. This merger is a lifeline, they needed it to survive.
- Probably should have put some fans on the battery for the Leaf lol
  
  If they expanded their lineup to be based on the Leaf EV instead of just leaving it a lil econobox and focusing on their god aweful CVT they may have had been a great early EV competitor. Instead, ownership just kept sucking and sucking the company dry

Whelp, Renault is getting super fucked. Bailing out Nissan was a mistake.
- How so? Renault had a massive stake and likely made bank while Nissan did well in the US, and they'll probably get a good deal on their shares with this merger. They're probably making out like bandits.

Mergers should be illegal.
- Yup, either build talent in-house or poach the workers with higher pay and better salaries.

Nonsan? Honsan? Nonda?

Honsan or Nisda?
- Honissan.
  
  Hondatsun
  
  Hondussy

Expect less competition and higher prices
- Really? I thought the competition these days was coming from China, not from Nissan
  
  Problem is - Chinese cars don't make it to us. Because tariffs.
  So end result is less competition on us market and higher prices.
  
  Didn't you mean Japan? Nissan isn't a country.
- Trump's tariffs are going to cause higher prices. I hardly think going from 40 auto companies to 39 will make much of a difference. Especially, compared to the problem I mentioned.

This is just too soon. I’m still shook up over losing Datsun in the 80s.
- We owned a Datsun.. and rolled it, many times on purpose. Sorry mom.

Gross.

Nissan's failures: Trash CVT, Toyota prices, failed to expand their e-Power (series) Hybrid, missed the small pick-up truck in the USA, ignored the sub $20k EV and they allowed shitty Tesla to grab the EV market. It means Mitsubishi will end up with Honda and Nissan.
No word from Renault?
- Bah. Their CVTs have been pretty decent since the 2018 revision. Don't care about EVs, though they have a more proven platform in the Leaf than Honda has. The Frontier is one of the best selling (and best) small/mid-size trucks in the US. I think it's the only one still actually made on a truck frame.
  So glad they're seemingly done with Renault. Nissan engineering quality was top notch before that infernal partnership.
  
  The Frontier's Q3 sales of ~16k were outpaced by the Ranger (21k) Colorado (29k), Maverick (45k), and Tacoma (57k). It did outsell the Ridgeline (13k) and Canyon (10k).
  I know there are ebs and flows as models change over, but I don't think either Nissan truck has ever been close to the front of the pack.
  source
- I thought the $20k EV segment was just impossible because just the battery alone costs $15k
  
  The new Hyundai Inster starts at 22 290 euros in Slovakia( and cars here are more expensive than the US), it is very much possible for car companies that have actual scale and don't waste resources on developing cybertrucks

Big Altima energy now for Accords

Goku fusion!
- Am I missing out on a new meme that everyone is in on? I keep seeing blank messages that everyone is upvoting (like the 5th one in the past few days). Is there an image that's not loading for me?

Is it then called Hondan or Nissa?
- It’s crazy how much of the car market has already been consolidated. They just keep putting out cars with other makes, even if they are owned by the same company. Hyundai and Kia are a perfect example.
  
  Wait till you find out how many components are shared, all the new mazda Hybrids use Toyota's power train, while the Toyota Supra uses BMW's B58 engine.
  This Honda Nissan situation is basically what happened with Hyundai and Kia in the past, Kia was struggling so Hyundai bought most of it.
  Economies of scale are needed nowadays, lots of shared parts, Kia/Hyundai sell the same vehicles, just with different stylings and minor differentiators.
  VW group is entire tiered system with some engines reserved for Audis. VW, Skoda and Seat are once again basically the same cars with different flavors, but for example the latest VW passat was built by Skoda.
- Hissan
- HONDANISSAN
- Ninda
- It'll probably be something boring like:
  HondaNissan Automotive Group

Do we really need larger cars?

CVT all the things.
- Electric cars don't need a transmission at all
  
  Why do some have a transmission?

Merry Christmas, Renault.

I enjoyed 90s Nissans when they made fun cars.
Surprised at how many people are in love with Honda. They're either annoyingly loud and slow Civics driven by young people with backwards caps, or by old people in sensible sedans like the Accord which are also slow but at least they aren't loud.
- What the fuck are you talking about? Civics are squarely average in loudness and unless you need to go like 120 mph their speed shouldn't be a problem lol, they're basically the same as every other standard 4- cylinder sedan.
  
  What the fuck are you talking about?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKX9GtyIOXk
- Cope. I hope you enjoy the 20 long years I'll own it, and the ten more I'll put on top of it for the highschooler who buys it.
  I bet this guy has a-
  Exhaust on my Civic? Sure do. Love. It. It's for pedestrian safety. They can hear me coming.

Honsan? Nisda?

I forbid it!

137 comments