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The fascinating thing is that regulators responded at all. Think about it. Automobile manufacturing is Japan's last halo industry -- the crown jewel of their

The fascinating thing is that regulators responded at all. Think about it. Automobile manufacturing is Japan's last halo industry -- the crown jewel of their declining economy. The past few years have not been easy, as they're up against increasingly stiff competition from China (going exponential) and rising US protectionism, and they're not well positioned for a global pivot to electric vehicles. This is pretty much the worst possible time for a scandal -- and to me it's surprising that Japanese regulators are allowed to pursue and publicize these raids and sanctions in the teeth of their own national interest.

lupusreal 2y ago
They're well positioned if that global pivot to EV flops and populist politicians undo all the "EVs mandatory by 20XX" laws. This seems to be what they're betting on.
- eru 2y ago
  The problem for that scenario is that running your cars with electricity seems to be getting cheaper relative to ICE? Even without demand from electric cars, battery technology will keep improving (perhaps slightly slower) because of all the demand from mobile computing gadgets. Aren't batteries the main cost disadvantage of electric cars compared to ICE? So even without misguided mandates, electric cars might be here to stay. (I explicitly call the mandates misguided, because the Right Way is to tax what you don't like, eg carbon emissions, and let people figure out by themselves how they want to solve it. Electric cars might be one way. Or moving closer to work, so you only have to drive half as much might be another way to react; and is just as good in terms of emisions as getting a car that's twice as efficient.)
  - sofixa 2y ago
    > I explicitly call the mandates misguided, because the Right Way is to tax what you don't like, eg carbon emissions, and let people figure out by themselves how they want to solve it. Electric cars might be one way. Or moving closer to work, so you only have to drive half as much might be another way to react; and is just as good in terms of emisions as getting a car that's twice as efficient. This is only if the thing "you don't like" doesn't have serious (like deadly) externalities. Just taxing leaded fuel more wouldn't have made the transition as quick; just taxing ICEs more won't force manufacturers to switch to electric and hybrid models quick enough. The threat of a ban will.
    - Thorrez 2y ago
      You can adjust the tax to be as high as you want to speed up the transition to be as fast as you want.
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        Sure, if you ignore the realities of politics.
        eru 2y ago
        If it's too high to call it a 'tax', just relabel it as a 'fine'. Some high fines for breaking a 'ban' are very popular.
    - eru 2y ago
      > Just taxing leaded fuel more wouldn't have made the transition as quick; [..] What makes you think so? You don't have to get rid of leaded fuel completely to get most of the benefits. If you get rid of 99.99% of leaded fuel, you reap approximately 99.99% of the benefits. And in fact, leaded fuels aren't banned for all applications. So whatever benefits we have gained, we have gained with some leaded fuels still being in use. Btw, we allow deadly externalities all the time. Driving your car, whether ICE or electric, at all is a stochastically deadly externality for pedestrians and cyclists and other drivers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program for a successful program of trading in externalities. Why is lead or CO2 from cars special? We still allow lead from some other engines, and we allow lead in eg solder and other applications. Wouldn't it be more efficient to have a uniform tax on its emission into the environment, instead of a ad-hoc patchwork of bans? > [...] just taxing ICEs more won't force manufacturers to switch to electric and hybrid models quick enough. The threat of a ban will. How quick is quick enough? And why wouldn't a high enough tax do that? If you tax carbon emissions high enough that ICEs effectively cost an extra millions dollars to run, wouldn't that effectively have the same effects as a ban? (A handfull of billionaires might still run some ICEs for fun, even at those punitive taxes. But they are a rounding error.) In any case, my point was more aimed at making the life of polluters harder, instead of giving subsidies to electric cars. In my view, a tax on emissions is best, but a ban on ICEs is still better than a subsidy or an explicit mandate for electric cars. That way you don't distort the decisions between riding your pushbike vs moving close to work vs riding an electric car.
  - consp 2y ago
    > The problem for that scenario is that running your cars with electricity seems to be getting cheaper relative to ICE? Currently for me it's cheaper to buy gas than drive electric. It's only cheaper if you are well off, have you own drive lane and can charge off solar panels, might even be cheaper without the solar panels but if you can afford your own drive lane or parking spot you have those as well. Here in NW Europe that's a minority and the vast majority does not have this advantage.
    - tarsinge 2y ago
      I don’t know how you made your calculation but in France using grid electricity without optimization (like night pricing) EV cars costs at least 1/2 less to run (17kWh/100 km at 0,25€/kWh, compared to typical ICE 5l/100km at 1,95€/l). And then you have all the savings on maintenance.
      - packetlost 2y ago
        There really isn't savings on maintenance, all the cost is frontloaded and backloaded. It costs almost as much as the car itself to replace the batteries at the end of their life and EVs are pretty much universally more expensive to purchase in the first place for this same reason. Also Europe has more expensive petrol prices than the US in general, that calculation is aggressively region-dependent. The real kicker is GP is correct, mostly. You don't have to do much for optimization for the day-to-day operating costs to be less, but you do have to generally be wealthy enough to own your own home with a garage to install a charger in (or be super lucky and have one at an apartment, which is quite uncommon still).
        eru 2y ago
        And as I suggested, batteries are getting better and cheaper. So the electric cars will keep improving their position relative to ICE. (I don't want to express any opinion on whether they are better or worse at the moment than ICE already.)
        2y ago
  - nottorp 2y ago
    > The problem for that scenario is that running your cars with electricity seems to be getting cheaper relative to ICE? Only if you can charge your car at home every night. And even then, maybe not on EU electricity prices. But the elephant in the room that you're missing is gasoline tends to be taxed to hell and back. What do you think will happen when enough people switch to electric that the states notice the loss of revenue?
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    I think convienence, depreciation and longevity are the main killers of EV popularity. Hybrids (plugin or traditional) win on convienence while having great operating costs. And for depreciation and longevity, it's hard to beat buying a Japanese car and driving it for 20 years before selling it still in great working condition. That tanks any operating cost savings you might hope to get from a EV. For example, I bought my last car, a 2002 Honda Accord, slightly used in 2004 for $4k. I sold it for the same this year. Obviously it lost value when you factor in inflation, but even so that almost rivals bicycles in affordability. Operating costs were negligible even with the cost of gas being what it is, certainly not enough to tip the scale for EVs.
    - rasz 2y ago
      Sorry, but on what planet did you acquire 2 year old $15K MSRP car for $2K? 2014?
- MaxikCZ 2y ago
  Thats like saying I am well positioned at the end of a gun's barrel if the bullet comes out the other way.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    Lol EVs are a joke, and politicians will be forced to admit it. Toyota knows exactly what they are doing, and it is to provide us with cars that meet our needs. They also make what is arguably the most reliable and well-tested hybrid, the Prius, and they could make EVs. Toyota's CEO has said that EVs can only serve 30% of consumers, and he's right.
    - pcardoso 2y ago
      I think the joke is not facing how we are going to get oil in the future. Toyota had a huge success with the Prius and then just slept on it for almost two decades. I had a 2nd generation, loved it but Toyota had nothing suitable on their lineup when I wanted to replace it. The newer Prius were just too little, too late.
      - adamomada 2y ago
        In colder climates I cannot see EVs being relied upon by people. The kind of places you still need the electricity to keep the engine from freezing overnight would destroy a battery’s capacity and from what energy that’s left you’d be wasting a bunch of it on heating the cabin.
        A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
        Be that as it may, in Norway, which sure ain't tropical, EVs make up >91% of new vehicles sold. An amazing statistic. > https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/general-information/news/norwegian-ev-market-surges-915-market-share-setting-sustainable-example https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/general-i... So they're finding a way to make it work. Granted, Norway doesn't get as cold as parts of the upper Midwest...
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  EV mandates are a scam. Powering them off coal and natural gas does nothing for carbon. We would need hundreds of new nuclear power plants in the US alone to go net zero. We need like 50% more electricity production to just go all-electric, not counting the excess needed to handle spikes in demand.
  - sandos 2y ago
    "Powering them off coal and natural gas does nothing for carbon" - This is actually not true. Most of the time your grid is less than 100% coal, and because of the efficiency of EVs in total the CO2 emitted is still less. See here for example: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/02/driving-on-electricity-is-now-much-cleaner-than-using-a-gasoline-car/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/02/driving-on-electricity-... Just a small quote: "Now, 93 percent of the country lives where the average EV is better than the most efficient gasoline vehicle (57 mpg)"
    - wakawaka28 2y ago
      I never said the grid was 100% coal. But it sure is like 80% fossil fuels in the US, one of the greenest countries: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ Now keep in mind, we need lots more electricity to power even a modest shift to EVs. Will your efficiency stats for EVs account for the energy used in building EVs to replace prematurely discarded gasoline vehicles, and building massive infrastructure everywhere to support EVs? Of course not. The officials pushing these impractical vehicles don't want you to think about all that.
dgellow 2y ago
VW was Germany’s “last halo” industry, their scandal didn’t do much, their stock price history shows it was very quickly put behind and forgotten
- sofixa 2y ago
  That's nonsense. Siemens (multiple entities of it), Merck, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, DHL, Infineon, Adidas and Puma, Bayer, Rheinmetall, Airbus, Continental, ThyssenKrupp, Bosch, Zeiss. Just a random selection off the top of my head.
  - dgellow 2y ago
    You may have missed the quotes. It’s just as nonsense to talk of last halo industry for Japan
    - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
      I'm not so sure. Automobiles are the leading export for both Japan and Germany, but Japan's auto fraction is significantly larger: > https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/exports-by-category https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/exports-by-category > https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/exports-by-category https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/exports-by-category What's more, Germany mostly "exports" to neighboring EU countries, which is a low friction and more stable proposition. Japan's exports are mostly to the US, China, and South Korea; its top export destination is China (+ Hong Kong). > https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/exports-by-country https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/exports-by-country Bottom line is that any scandal that hurts Japan's auto industry really hurts Japan's entire economy.

lupusreal 2y ago

They're well positioned if that global pivot to EV flops and populist politicians undo all the "EVs mandatory by 20XX" laws. This seems to be what they're betting on.

eru 2y ago
The problem for that scenario is that running your cars with electricity seems to be getting cheaper relative to ICE? Even without demand from electric cars, battery technology will keep improving (perhaps slightly slower) because of all the demand from mobile computing gadgets. Aren't batteries the main cost disadvantage of electric cars compared to ICE? So even without misguided mandates, electric cars might be here to stay. (I explicitly call the mandates misguided, because the Right Way is to tax what you don't like, eg carbon emissions, and let people figure out by themselves how they want to solve it. Electric cars might be one way. Or moving closer to work, so you only have to drive half as much might be another way to react; and is just as good in terms of emisions as getting a car that's twice as efficient.)
- sofixa 2y ago
  > I explicitly call the mandates misguided, because the Right Way is to tax what you don't like, eg carbon emissions, and let people figure out by themselves how they want to solve it. Electric cars might be one way. Or moving closer to work, so you only have to drive half as much might be another way to react; and is just as good in terms of emisions as getting a car that's twice as efficient. This is only if the thing "you don't like" doesn't have serious (like deadly) externalities. Just taxing leaded fuel more wouldn't have made the transition as quick; just taxing ICEs more won't force manufacturers to switch to electric and hybrid models quick enough. The threat of a ban will.
  - Thorrez 2y ago
    You can adjust the tax to be as high as you want to speed up the transition to be as fast as you want.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      Sure, if you ignore the realities of politics.
      - eru 2y ago
        If it's too high to call it a 'tax', just relabel it as a 'fine'. Some high fines for breaking a 'ban' are very popular.
  - eru 2y ago
    > Just taxing leaded fuel more wouldn't have made the transition as quick; [..] What makes you think so? You don't have to get rid of leaded fuel completely to get most of the benefits. If you get rid of 99.99% of leaded fuel, you reap approximately 99.99% of the benefits. And in fact, leaded fuels aren't banned for all applications. So whatever benefits we have gained, we have gained with some leaded fuels still being in use. Btw, we allow deadly externalities all the time. Driving your car, whether ICE or electric, at all is a stochastically deadly externality for pedestrians and cyclists and other drivers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program for a successful program of trading in externalities. Why is lead or CO2 from cars special? We still allow lead from some other engines, and we allow lead in eg solder and other applications. Wouldn't it be more efficient to have a uniform tax on its emission into the environment, instead of a ad-hoc patchwork of bans? > [...] just taxing ICEs more won't force manufacturers to switch to electric and hybrid models quick enough. The threat of a ban will. How quick is quick enough? And why wouldn't a high enough tax do that? If you tax carbon emissions high enough that ICEs effectively cost an extra millions dollars to run, wouldn't that effectively have the same effects as a ban? (A handfull of billionaires might still run some ICEs for fun, even at those punitive taxes. But they are a rounding error.) In any case, my point was more aimed at making the life of polluters harder, instead of giving subsidies to electric cars. In my view, a tax on emissions is best, but a ban on ICEs is still better than a subsidy or an explicit mandate for electric cars. That way you don't distort the decisions between riding your pushbike vs moving close to work vs riding an electric car.
- consp 2y ago
  > The problem for that scenario is that running your cars with electricity seems to be getting cheaper relative to ICE? Currently for me it's cheaper to buy gas than drive electric. It's only cheaper if you are well off, have you own drive lane and can charge off solar panels, might even be cheaper without the solar panels but if you can afford your own drive lane or parking spot you have those as well. Here in NW Europe that's a minority and the vast majority does not have this advantage.
  - tarsinge 2y ago
    I don’t know how you made your calculation but in France using grid electricity without optimization (like night pricing) EV cars costs at least 1/2 less to run (17kWh/100 km at 0,25€/kWh, compared to typical ICE 5l/100km at 1,95€/l). And then you have all the savings on maintenance.
    - packetlost 2y ago
      There really isn't savings on maintenance, all the cost is frontloaded and backloaded. It costs almost as much as the car itself to replace the batteries at the end of their life and EVs are pretty much universally more expensive to purchase in the first place for this same reason. Also Europe has more expensive petrol prices than the US in general, that calculation is aggressively region-dependent. The real kicker is GP is correct, mostly. You don't have to do much for optimization for the day-to-day operating costs to be less, but you do have to generally be wealthy enough to own your own home with a garage to install a charger in (or be super lucky and have one at an apartment, which is quite uncommon still).
      - eru 2y ago
        And as I suggested, batteries are getting better and cheaper. So the electric cars will keep improving their position relative to ICE. (I don't want to express any opinion on whether they are better or worse at the moment than ICE already.)
        2y ago
- nottorp 2y ago
  > The problem for that scenario is that running your cars with electricity seems to be getting cheaper relative to ICE? Only if you can charge your car at home every night. And even then, maybe not on EU electricity prices. But the elephant in the room that you're missing is gasoline tends to be taxed to hell and back. What do you think will happen when enough people switch to electric that the states notice the loss of revenue?
- lupusreal 2y ago
  I think convienence, depreciation and longevity are the main killers of EV popularity. Hybrids (plugin or traditional) win on convienence while having great operating costs. And for depreciation and longevity, it's hard to beat buying a Japanese car and driving it for 20 years before selling it still in great working condition. That tanks any operating cost savings you might hope to get from a EV. For example, I bought my last car, a 2002 Honda Accord, slightly used in 2004 for $4k. I sold it for the same this year. Obviously it lost value when you factor in inflation, but even so that almost rivals bicycles in affordability. Operating costs were negligible even with the cost of gas being what it is, certainly not enough to tip the scale for EVs.
  - rasz 2y ago
    Sorry, but on what planet did you acquire 2 year old $15K MSRP car for $2K? 2014?
MaxikCZ 2y ago
Thats like saying I am well positioned at the end of a gun's barrel if the bullet comes out the other way.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  Lol EVs are a joke, and politicians will be forced to admit it. Toyota knows exactly what they are doing, and it is to provide us with cars that meet our needs. They also make what is arguably the most reliable and well-tested hybrid, the Prius, and they could make EVs. Toyota's CEO has said that EVs can only serve 30% of consumers, and he's right.
  - pcardoso 2y ago
    I think the joke is not facing how we are going to get oil in the future. Toyota had a huge success with the Prius and then just slept on it for almost two decades. I had a 2nd generation, loved it but Toyota had nothing suitable on their lineup when I wanted to replace it. The newer Prius were just too little, too late.
    - adamomada 2y ago
      In colder climates I cannot see EVs being relied upon by people. The kind of places you still need the electricity to keep the engine from freezing overnight would destroy a battery’s capacity and from what energy that’s left you’d be wasting a bunch of it on heating the cabin.
      - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
        Be that as it may, in Norway, which sure ain't tropical, EVs make up >91% of new vehicles sold. An amazing statistic. > https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/general-information/news/norwegian-ev-market-surges-915-market-share-setting-sustainable-example https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/general-i... So they're finding a way to make it work. Granted, Norway doesn't get as cold as parts of the upper Midwest...
wakawaka28 2y ago
EV mandates are a scam. Powering them off coal and natural gas does nothing for carbon. We would need hundreds of new nuclear power plants in the US alone to go net zero. We need like 50% more electricity production to just go all-electric, not counting the excess needed to handle spikes in demand.
- sandos 2y ago
  "Powering them off coal and natural gas does nothing for carbon" - This is actually not true. Most of the time your grid is less than 100% coal, and because of the efficiency of EVs in total the CO2 emitted is still less. See here for example: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/02/driving-on-electricity-is-now-much-cleaner-than-using-a-gasoline-car/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/02/driving-on-electricity-... Just a small quote: "Now, 93 percent of the country lives where the average EV is better than the most efficient gasoline vehicle (57 mpg)"
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    I never said the grid was 100% coal. But it sure is like 80% fossil fuels in the US, one of the greenest countries: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ Now keep in mind, we need lots more electricity to power even a modest shift to EVs. Will your efficiency stats for EVs account for the energy used in building EVs to replace prematurely discarded gasoline vehicles, and building massive infrastructure everywhere to support EVs? Of course not. The officials pushing these impractical vehicles don't want you to think about all that.

dgellow 2y ago

VW was Germany’s “last halo” industry, their scandal didn’t do much, their stock price history shows it was very quickly put behind and forgotten

sofixa 2y ago
That's nonsense. Siemens (multiple entities of it), Merck, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, DHL, Infineon, Adidas and Puma, Bayer, Rheinmetall, Airbus, Continental, ThyssenKrupp, Bosch, Zeiss. Just a random selection off the top of my head.
- dgellow 2y ago
  You may have missed the quotes. It’s just as nonsense to talk of last halo industry for Japan
  - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
    I'm not so sure. Automobiles are the leading export for both Japan and Germany, but Japan's auto fraction is significantly larger: > https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/exports-by-category https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/exports-by-category > https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/exports-by-category https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/exports-by-category What's more, Germany mostly "exports" to neighboring EU countries, which is a low friction and more stable proposition. Japan's exports are mostly to the US, China, and South Korea; its top export destination is China (+ Hong Kong). > https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/exports-by-country https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/exports-by-country Bottom line is that any scandal that hurts Japan's auto industry really hurts Japan's entire economy.