8 ms·

Having worked with a car parts manufacturer in Japan, I disagree. It's true there's a huge industry for white label car parts manufacturing in Japan. These com

• AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  If it is simply protectionism, it is a particularly foolish one in the annals of economics. EV / alternate energy / grid storage is in "mature production" stage of full industrial scale-up, and is basically already at price parity (EV vs ICE drivetrain) or dramatically cheaper (Solar/Wind vs Coal/Natural Gas). Some solid state battery will hit production, and economies of scale are still in growth phase. I imagine Toyota, the largest US car maker and probably globally the largest, is in deep trouble and is in total denial about it. Hitching your future to hydrogen which at it's best is probably about equal to EVs in cost, and which is so far behind practical use as a fuel that by the time (10? 20? years) a generation, transport, and fuelling infrastructure was built out, EVs probably will be 1/2 the cost they are now.
  • PhantomGremlin 5y ago
    Hitching your future to hydrogen This is absolutely baffling to me, given, as you noted, generation, transport, and fueling issues. Stevie Wonder would have no problem seeing the problem with hydrogen, and yet Toyota still can't see it?
    • hakfoo 5y ago
      I wonder if it's thoughts of a patent moat. I'm guessing Nissan, GM, and Tesla have fairly robust patent portfolios related to recent EV tech. Toyota probably has some stuff to offer related to the electrical side of the hybrid drive, but it's probably a far weaker portfolio-- some of their stuff is near the end of the patent lifecycle, and some is only useful in the context of range extended or hybrid-electric designs. That means they can't offer a compelling cross-license agreement. It might cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars per vehicle to license the patents at "market rates", particularly of other players see it as a way to hobble a huge competitor. OTOH, if they can make hydrogen work, they probably hold a lot more cards to deal with other manufacturers. I'm surprised there wasn't more two-pronged thinking though. The selling point of hydrogen fuel-cell was that it was less subject to range anxiety, but we knew there are clearly identifiable markets where that message was a non-starter. No point selling a 500km range to a city dweller whose longest journey is 25km, but you could sell them a vehicle with Ni-MH batteries left over from 1990s laptops and it would cover their needs. This would have allowed them to focus on the markets where liquid/gaseous fuel would make its last stands. I'd think freight would be the big one-- even if there's a charging station every 100km along the interstate, business wants to minimize fueling stops, so being able to say "800km+ range-- a full shift of driving on one tank of hydrogen" would set the bar high for electric competition.
• xxpor 5y ago
  Japan's business and bureaucratic culture continues to fascinate me. On the one hand, they're well known for agile lean manufacturing that can adapt, like you said. Also construction costs, extremely advanced trains, etc etc.. On the other hand, they're very resistant to change. See fax machines, website aesthetics, personal stamps (there's a Japanese word for these that I'm forgetting), tons and tons of paperwork, not leaving until your boss does, companies being run by families, the list goes on. I don't know if I really have a conclusion, it's just that I don't get how it all works together. And given their GDP growth, I'm not sure if "works" is really the right term either.
  • felipelemos 5y ago
    Which is not so far from Germany if you think about it, apart from the GDP part.
  • whoaisme 5y ago
    Crazy how the sum of an entire nation can be just boiled down to GDP growth. It seems pretty obvious Japan works better than Nigeria or China, GDP growth rates notwithstanding. You could pick any group and make insipid critiques about their culture.
  • suction 5y ago
    A short explanation is that they set it up once after WW2 by copying from the US and Europe, but since then the countries they copied from got wise to the IP theft and copycat manufacturing and blocked the transfer of later tech and processes. So Japan is forced to keep up the old thing because it's the only way the know how to run. They couldn't modernise from within. The Japanese economy has many traits of a cargo cult. Their culture around office work, the suits, the drinking, the smoking, the "entertaining your clients with prostitutes", the over hours doing "dara-dara" (grunting and head-scratching in front of an open Excel sheet) just for show, etc. is all straight from the Mad Men era as well.
    • lozenge 5y ago
      US working culture is a cargo cult. Cover letters, anodyne non-descriptions of "challenges", "going offline" and "touching base", cookie-cutter Scrum methodologies... hence why we just call it "culture".
• clomond 5y ago
  Just a few points to consider here. 1) the companies may be agile, but there is a very big difference between competency in mechanical device/metal working/plastic moulds etc and ramping up electrical / battery / material science / control systems. I see similar challenges in the global 3rd party parts suppliers being valid too. The % of value add of an electric vehicle that the existing infra can support is significantly less than a vehicle with an ICE engine / transmission. 2) Batteries, with the right thermal and charge management systems can last the life of the vehicle itself, with the whole set of components reaching 1 mil km in distance with 1.5 mil km (1 mil miles) in reasonable approach. 3) charging infrastructure can scale with the number of vehicles - other countries have power grids too!
  • verisimilidude 5y ago
    Re: 1. I can only speak to the company I saw up close, Mitsuba [1]. They are already very sophisticated on all fronts you've described: mechanical, electrical, material. Even software. If I had to guess, they're licking their lips at the kinds of higher margin products that electric cars might represent for their business. And they're not alone in their capabilities among Japanese parts suppliers. [1] https://www.mitsuba.co.jp/en/ https://www.mitsuba.co.jp/en/ Re: 2 and 3. I'm sure you're correct. But we're talking about salesmanship here. Logic and facts don't always have a buyer. They would need to find ways to sell those used cars to potentially skeptical markets abroad, in huge volume, where they've already got a great racket with ICE cars.
  • petre 5y ago
    > very big difference between competency in mechanical device/metal working/plastic moulds etc and ramping up electrical / battery / material science / control systems 1. Tesla uses Panasonic batteries. Japan already has quite a lot of domestic industry manufacturing those parts and the quality is also top notch. 2. Dunno about batteries, probably with proper management they can last long, but if you maximize performance they'll degrade just like horsepower pumped low capacity engines. 3. Remember Japan had the Fukushima nuclear accident and it has turned off nuclear powerplants and replaced the capacity with coal for almost 10 years. I don't know if the nuclear capacity they have left is even 100% back online.
  • 5y ago
• Neil44 5y ago
  Yeah I don’t get why people keep repeating that electric cars have fewer components. Most of the car is exactly the same. But batteries have thousands of parts and electrical connections. Motors and the attached gears also fail. Everything else is the same as IC.
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    The drivetrain in an EV has fewer components, but you're right about the rest of the car. But it doesn't really matter. Internal combustion engines made in the last 20 years are very reliable. Almost all the weaknesses have been identified and compensated for. I have a Ford Focus that's nearly 20 years old, it still starts and runs like a new car. Has never had a major engine or transmission issue, just a water pump and an alternator or two. Will electric motors be more reliable than internal combustion engines? Probably. But it's a difference that's not going to be noticable by most people.
    • cheschire 5y ago
      If you didn't have any transmission problems, it's because you haven't had a new focus in the last 20 years.
      • Marsymars 5y ago
        The manual transmission ones have been pretty reliable.
    • cogman10 5y ago
      I've a 10 year old ford edge that's been nothing but failed parts. How many miles do you have on your focus? My edge started degrading fast after about 100,000 miles.
    • rlonn 5y ago
      The difference I think people will notice is how much less service a BEV requires as opposed to an ICE car. The ICE needs constant changes of oils and filters to keep those advanced engines operational, and this turns into frequent service appointments that cost money. Tesla Model 3 apparently has a 6 year service interval.
• AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > Furthermore, electric cars still need complex parts! Sensors of all types, electric windows and door locks, key fobs, air conditioners, steering wheels, windshield wiper motors, etc. The list is so very long. Traditional cars already have all of those things. For a given volume of cars, the quantity you need doesn't increase for an electric car. They're the status quo, not a way to make up for the loss of some other production. And electric cars don't have cam shafts, exhaust pipes, fuel pumps, transmissions, emissions control systems, alternators, oil pans, spark plugs. That list is so very long too, and all of that is going away and not being replaced with anything.
  • verisimilidude 5y ago
    Sure. You’re ignoring that the global market for cars is rapidly growing. What they may lose in cam shaft sales, they may gain in EV part sales anyway. Battery sales. Time will tell. This would be a good place to mention that even Tesla has long partnered with Panasonic to help with their supply of batteries.
    • tuatoru 5y ago
      Sure, Panasonic will be fine (or at least able to compete). Denso (34% of revenue in traditional thermal control, i.e. radiators, water pumps, etc., also famous for spark plugs) will take a hit. The thousands of much smaller companies that specialise in precisely fabricating minor parts (say, exhaust pipe mounts or engine mounts), less so. The expertise is not so transferable. There will be change, and everybody hates that.
    • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      > You’re ignoring that the global market for cars is rapidly growing. "For a given volume of cars" still holds. If the world is buying more cars, the manufacturer of piston rings is losing the opportunity to expand their business instead of shutting it down, and is inclined to resist. > What they may lose in cam shaft sales, they may gain in EV part sales anyway. The whole point is that EVs have significantly fewer parts, and especially fewer moving parts that wear out. > Battery sales. The local supplier of bespoke transmission linkages for specific models of Toyota then has to enter into a global commodity market in competition with multi-billion dollar international companies like LG and Tesla and other commodity suppliers in China, South Korea, Germany or Texas. > This would be a good place to mention that even Tesla has long partnered with Panasonic to help with their supply of batteries. They did this when they were a tiny upstart with no internal production capacity. They're now constructing their own battery factories on three continents. Anyone converting their whole lineup to electric is likely to do the same because it's the single most expensive part of the car.
• xyzzy21 5y ago
  The FUNDAMENTAL reality of any Japanese technology companies: Do JAPANESE customers want it enough to pay for it? If the answer is "no", nothing in existence can change the strategy, design or plans they have. That goes for industrial equipment, customer goods, and certainly for cars. It doesn't matter who else does the alternative, or who else tries to shame them into something - it won't work. Gaijin opinions count for infinitely less than Nihongo opinions. Anyone who's not Japanese and has done business with a Japanese business quickly finds this out. If you work for a US subsidiary, you quickly learn NOTHING you suggest will ever be adopted unless major Japanese markets says the same thing or think it's a good idea. And then it will only be implementing with a peculiar Japanese form. It's just how reality is.
  • sangnoir 5y ago
    > Do JAPANESE customers want it enough to pay for it? Government policy has a number of levers to pull that determine what customers "want" (see Federal Tax Credit for Electric Cars, or Norway's vehicle tax regime). Governments can also limit the customers choices by declaring no new ICE will sold by the year 20X0, even if the customers want it.
• serf 5y ago
  > In Japan, many people only keep their cars for a few years, then sell them back. three major reasons for this, fairly separate from car-electrification. 1) mandatory (paid, around 900usd) motor-vehicle inspections at 3 years 2) cost of mechanical maintenance in Japan (few car shops, huge prices) 3) no tax reduction on older/vintage/used/low-cost vehicles (like the US value-based registration costs) I don't disagree that the auto industry of Japan is likely also protecting their own interests -- but driving in Japan has always been a pretty big personal burden on people; I see no reason why electric cars are going to get a pass from the three things I listed, they require maintenance, have a high value, and fail inspections, too. unless laws change those failed inspection cars are either getting exported , fixed, or destroyed. there is still an export element available there.
  • WorldMaker 5y ago
    With fewer moving mechanical parts, and exhaust problems to inspect, what is there to even inspect at 3 years on an EV? That seems like an easy political fix.
    • fomine3 5y ago
      So it reduces work especially in local area, possibly a bit hard political fix. Reducing work isn't always considered to good here in Japan.