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Under Goshn and his close early advisors, Renault-Nissan started working on EVs, launching the Leaf and Zoé. Early, he also managed to streamline production of

by orwin 2y ago

Under Goshn and his close early advisors, Renault-Nissan started working on EVs, launching the Leaf and Zoé. Early, he also managed to streamline production of the two companies, and started to implement management changes that let some workers have more autonomy. The issue is that power got to his head and truly believe he was the second coming of Jesus or something, and stopped improving his companies to rub shoulders with the Nepo CEO/aristocrat crowd. Had he continued the push toward affordable EV, Nissan could have been BYD, but R&D stopped, for no visible reason. My personal theory is that the fallout from his divorce estranged him from his early friends and his closest advisor (his wife) and idiotic sycophants made him believe he was above the law and deserved even more. I've heard a lot of good things about pre-2008 Goshn, from people who aren't usually glazing billionaires, so maybe I'm biased.

csours 2y ago
> My personal theory is that the fallout from his divorce ... Yes, I've noticed that people having nasty public fights with family members can lead to extremely negative effects on decision making.
kridsdale1 2y ago
Boy, that final paragraph sure looks like another automaker CEO…
- namdnay 2y ago
  No he was clearly always an asshole (but I agree he clearly had some genius)
- dredds 2y ago
  His pay sounds small in retrospect and hardly compares to what Elon extracts from Tesla, but still deemed high by Japan's standards where employee's jobs are considered sacrosanct in a more just system. Ultimately that was why he was hired in the first place, and Nissan needed such a outsider at a critical moment to reform themselves but didn't learn from it unfortunately. Asianometry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsL6JAUZFiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsL6JAUZFiQ
sfifs 2y ago
> and idiotic sycophants made him believe he was above the law and deserved even more Well in all fairness he is above the law. He walked out of Japan and is free in his country.
- vosper 2y ago
  > He walked out of Japan Even better: He escaped by hiding in a music equipment box that was carried onto a private jet https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57760993 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57760993
  - chasil 2y ago
    There are two well-known documentaries about the Goshn captivity and escape from Japan. The first is from Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81227167 https://www.netflix.com/title/81227167 The second is from Apple: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/wanted-the-escape-of-carlos-ghosn/umc.cmc.34nvp6vc5in9logmjc7hezp52 https://tv.apple.com/us/show/wanted-the-escape-of-carlos-gho... Carlos Goshn participated in the Apple documentary. IMDB is also showing this one: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt15048602/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt15048602/
  - WeylandYutani 2y ago
    There was a famous Dutch philosopher who managed to piss of the government and escaped from a castle that way (minus the private jet) in the 17th century. His wife was allowed to bring him books and he used the box to escape. He went to Paris and never got extradited either.
- lmm 2y ago
  His prosecution was blatantly motivated (the CEO who replaced him has far bigger embezzleme^H^Hfinancial irregularities that no-one cares to charge him for). I doubt people would have been so eager to help him escape if he had actually broken the law rather than being charged for running a big company while foreign.
  - mikeyouse 2y ago
rr808 2y ago
BYD is unique because it can leverage the Chinese government's push into EVs along with the lax environmental regulation giving cheap batteries & other components. I dont think anyone can compete with Chinese car makers.
- spacebanana7 2y ago
  Hyundai and Kia still manage to make fairly competitive EVs. Having an established dealer, customer and maintenance networks can mitigate those BYD advantages. Also if Japan had a serious contender fr the EV space, a good CEO should be able to persuade their government subsidies are deserved. With a trifecta of corporate, union and environmentalist lobbying.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  I believe that this thesis supported by many Americans, that the Chinese companies are too strong competitors for the US companies only due to governmental subsidies and lax environmental regulation is an extremely dangerous illusion. Until maybe 10 years ago, I would have agreed that all or at least most of the Chinese products were no better than copies of Western products. However during recent years, at least during the last 5 or 6 years, both among commercial products and among the published research papers, I have seen far more innovation from China than from USA. Such underestimation of the capabilities of a competitor, like the assumption that without subsidies or lax regulations they would not still be better, can only doom USA. While these claims about subsidies and lax regulations are ubiquitous in USA for justifying failures, I have yet to see any proof or any accurate numeric data supporting them. I doubt that China really has laxer environmental regulations than USA. What is likely to happen is that in China it must be much easier to avoid the enforcing of the regulations, by bribing the authorities. Perhaps there are governmental subsidies in China, but in USA I never see the start of any significant private investment without great subsidies, at least from the local government, in the form of various kinds of tax breaks. This kind of governmental subsidies that are very common in USA are only seldom permitted in other countries, e.g. in Europe.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    3-9x equivalent US / European subsidies is a big difference. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/foul-play-on-the-scale-and-scope-of-industrial-subsidies-in-china-32738/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/foul-play-on-the-scale-... And subsidies don't only affect the final price of a good: they also provide a company more funding for R&D. To say nothing of forced technology transfers via joint ventures. The EU also still subsidizes a ton of industries, e.g. agriculture at €40.95 billion https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/financing-cap/cap-funds_en#eagf https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/... (I'd agree that subsidies are needed to support a key sector like agriculture today, but they're still subsidies)
jillesvangurp 2y ago
He's definitely narcissistic. But that doesn't make him wrong. It suited the Japanese board very well to paint him as corrupt and get rid of him. Nissan's performance after that took a decidedly downward trajectory. Which is why the merger with Honda became a kind of hail-Mary strategy recently. There was an interesting interview with him where he commented on the, then, still active negotiations about a possible merge of Nissan and Honda. Very interesting to listen to. He identified that there was essentially no synergy between the two and that a merger doesn't really make sense for either company. They don't really complement each other. After the merger, you'd merely have two of each in a gigantic company that isn't performing great. Similar cars, going after similar buyer segments, competing EV strategies and related investments, etc. Except Honda is a bit better than Nissan. So, they'd be ending up inheriting a lot of problems whereas Nissan wouldn't really gain anything they don't already have. The core issue is that Nissan in particular needs to adjust course and is not willing to do that. That's also the reason this deal is collapsing: Honda doesn't want to make Nissan their problem and Nissan is rejecting the notion that they need to change. Ghosn's analysis was pretty sharp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljewn28Korw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljewn28Korw
- Jgrubb 2y ago
  > He's definitely narcissistic. But that doesn't make him wrong. If you’re right about narcissism, one of the issues there is an inability to realize that he can be wrong. “Maybe I’m wrong about this” literally cannot occur to the narcissist, their entire worldview is built around their being right and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong (and therefore an enemy).

by orwin 2y ago

csours 2y ago

> My personal theory is that the fallout from his divorce ... Yes, I've noticed that people having nasty public fights with family members can lead to extremely negative effects on decision making.

kridsdale1 2y ago

Boy, that final paragraph sure looks like another automaker CEO…

namdnay 2y ago
No he was clearly always an asshole (but I agree he clearly had some genius)
dredds 2y ago
His pay sounds small in retrospect and hardly compares to what Elon extracts from Tesla, but still deemed high by Japan's standards where employee's jobs are considered sacrosanct in a more just system. Ultimately that was why he was hired in the first place, and Nissan needed such a outsider at a critical moment to reform themselves but didn't learn from it unfortunately. Asianometry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsL6JAUZFiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsL6JAUZFiQ

sfifs 2y ago

> and idiotic sycophants made him believe he was above the law and deserved even more Well in all fairness he is above the law. He walked out of Japan and is free in his country.

vosper 2y ago
> He walked out of Japan Even better: He escaped by hiding in a music equipment box that was carried onto a private jet https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57760993 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57760993
- chasil 2y ago
  There are two well-known documentaries about the Goshn captivity and escape from Japan. The first is from Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81227167 https://www.netflix.com/title/81227167 The second is from Apple: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/wanted-the-escape-of-carlos-ghosn/umc.cmc.34nvp6vc5in9logmjc7hezp52 https://tv.apple.com/us/show/wanted-the-escape-of-carlos-gho... Carlos Goshn participated in the Apple documentary. IMDB is also showing this one: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt15048602/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt15048602/
- WeylandYutani 2y ago
  There was a famous Dutch philosopher who managed to piss of the government and escaped from a castle that way (minus the private jet) in the 17th century. His wife was allowed to bring him books and he used the box to escape. He went to Paris and never got extradited either.
lmm 2y ago
His prosecution was blatantly motivated (the CEO who replaced him has far bigger embezzleme^H^Hfinancial irregularities that no-one cares to charge him for). I doubt people would have been so eager to help him escape if he had actually broken the law rather than being charged for running a big company while foreign.
- mikeyouse 2y ago

rr808 2y ago

BYD is unique because it can leverage the Chinese government's push into EVs along with the lax environmental regulation giving cheap batteries & other components. I dont think anyone can compete with Chinese car makers.

spacebanana7 2y ago
Hyundai and Kia still manage to make fairly competitive EVs. Having an established dealer, customer and maintenance networks can mitigate those BYD advantages. Also if Japan had a serious contender fr the EV space, a good CEO should be able to persuade their government subsidies are deserved. With a trifecta of corporate, union and environmentalist lobbying.
adrian_b 2y ago
I believe that this thesis supported by many Americans, that the Chinese companies are too strong competitors for the US companies only due to governmental subsidies and lax environmental regulation is an extremely dangerous illusion. Until maybe 10 years ago, I would have agreed that all or at least most of the Chinese products were no better than copies of Western products. However during recent years, at least during the last 5 or 6 years, both among commercial products and among the published research papers, I have seen far more innovation from China than from USA. Such underestimation of the capabilities of a competitor, like the assumption that without subsidies or lax regulations they would not still be better, can only doom USA. While these claims about subsidies and lax regulations are ubiquitous in USA for justifying failures, I have yet to see any proof or any accurate numeric data supporting them. I doubt that China really has laxer environmental regulations than USA. What is likely to happen is that in China it must be much easier to avoid the enforcing of the regulations, by bribing the authorities. Perhaps there are governmental subsidies in China, but in USA I never see the start of any significant private investment without great subsidies, at least from the local government, in the form of various kinds of tax breaks. This kind of governmental subsidies that are very common in USA are only seldom permitted in other countries, e.g. in Europe.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  3-9x equivalent US / European subsidies is a big difference. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/foul-play-on-the-scale-and-scope-of-industrial-subsidies-in-china-32738/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/foul-play-on-the-scale-... And subsidies don't only affect the final price of a good: they also provide a company more funding for R&D. To say nothing of forced technology transfers via joint ventures. The EU also still subsidizes a ton of industries, e.g. agriculture at €40.95 billion https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/financing-cap/cap-funds_en#eagf https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/... (I'd agree that subsidies are needed to support a key sector like agriculture today, but they're still subsidies)

jillesvangurp 2y ago

He's definitely narcissistic. But that doesn't make him wrong. It suited the Japanese board very well to paint him as corrupt and get rid of him. Nissan's performance after that took a decidedly downward trajectory. Which is why the merger with Honda became a kind of hail-Mary strategy recently. There was an interesting interview with him where he commented on the, then, still active negotiations about a possible merge of Nissan and Honda. Very interesting to listen to. He identified that there was essentially no synergy between the two and that a merger doesn't really make sense for either company. They don't really complement each other. After the merger, you'd merely have two of each in a gigantic company that isn't performing great. Similar cars, going after similar buyer segments, competing EV strategies and related investments, etc. Except Honda is a bit better than Nissan. So, they'd be ending up inheriting a lot of problems whereas Nissan wouldn't really gain anything they don't already have. The core issue is that Nissan in particular needs to adjust course and is not willing to do that. That's also the reason this deal is collapsing: Honda doesn't want to make Nissan their problem and Nissan is rejecting the notion that they need to change. Ghosn's analysis was pretty sharp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljewn28Korw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljewn28Korw

Jgrubb 2y ago
> He's definitely narcissistic. But that doesn't make him wrong. If you’re right about narcissism, one of the issues there is an inability to realize that he can be wrong. “Maybe I’m wrong about this” literally cannot occur to the narcissist, their entire worldview is built around their being right and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong (and therefore an enemy).