#Japan

Infiniti’s Q50 will come “this summer” says the new York Daily News, which nonetheless already “reviewed” it, coming to the conclusion that “the all new Infiniti Q50 will be base priced at just $36,450, and the expected to be most popular trim level, the “Premium,” featuring an optional, navigation system is expected to come in at $40,700.”

Then, finally, a reporter asks Ghosn when he intends to pack up and leave. Of course, this is Japan, and the question is asked in a circuitous way. The reporter argues that Nissan now makes solid profits, hence Ghosn could perhaps put the company into the hands of someone else, such allowing Ghosn to focus fully on Renault, which needs all the help it can get. This suggestion earns the reporter a likewise polite rebuke. Ghosn thanks him “for taking care of my own organization.” Pierced by Ghosn’s trademark laser eyes, the reporter deflates into his seat.

Finally, a chance for Ghosn to speak about his favorite topic: The value of the yen. Two years ago in Kyushu, Ghosn said that its valuation against the dollar and other major currencies was a crime against nature, a perversion. Back then, you got 77 yen to the dollar, and I assure you that 76 yen buy next to nothing. Ghosn called a high. The rise of the deviant was arrested. In the following year, the yen turned around, fainthearted first, then, with honest Abe getting behind the wheel in Japan, a dollar now buys 100 yen.

Ghosn does not want to hear talk of a “low “ yen.

Asked today at the annual results conference in Yokohama whether he wants to back off from his old target of putting 1.5 million EVs on the road by 2016, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn displayed an astounding degree of determination. He still believes in the 1.5 million. Maybe a little later than 2016.

Our last look at the Accord was back in September when we ran a two-parter ( part 1, part 2) after being invited to the launch event. Yes, shockingly our invite wasn’t lost in the mail. As TTAC has said in the past, there are problems with launch events. Usually you’re running around in a pre-production car that may not be “quite right” yet, you have to split your driving time with some dude from another publication (shout out to Hooniverse on that trip). Drive time is limited, and exclusively done on roads selected by the manufacturer. Sometimes you don’t get the trim level you want either. What I wanted was one step up from the base model, the mainstream EX and I wanted it on the same roads I’ve driven the other Camcord competitors. Here’s that review.

Nissan closed the year in America with U.S. sales up by 10 percent, but that wasn’t enough to please Ghosn. Said the CEO today in Yokohama:

“China was not our biggest disappointment last year. It was mainly the United States. We were expecting a strong year. It did not happen. We postponed it to 2013.”

Nissan is the largest of all Japanese automakers in China, and therefore has the most to lose. With about a quarter of its global sales in China, Nissan has the highest exposure to the ups and downs of the Middle Kingdom. When Chinese rioted in the streets, overturned Japanese cars and torched their dealerships , Nissan was beaten hard. At one point, sales of Nissan cars were cut in half.

Recently, the situation has improved a bit. Nissan’s April sales in China even booked a slight increase over April 2012. A month and a couple percent do not make a trend. Says Ghosn:

If any carmaker is hoping for an imminent turn-around in Europe, or is telling shareholders (I am looking at you, GM) that better times will be here again real soon now, then Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn has a bucket of ice-cold water for them.

“Europe is going to be bad,” Ghosn predicted today in Yokohama. Ghosn also serves as CEO of Renault, a company that is taking major lumps in a market that has been careening south for five years in a row now. One would assume that a man in his position paints a rosier picture. Instead, Ghosn’s pallet is all gloom.

Ghosn knows what is on the mind of the European customer:

If you wanted to have a ten minute advantage (for placing those jumbo derivatives order into the mainframe of your hedge fund) before Nissan’s annual results for the last fiscal were announced in the newly redecorated meeting room on the 8th floor of their Yokohama headquarters, all you had to do was read the smiling faces of Nissan’s top lieutenants. Executive VP Andy Palmer was all grins.

Found around the corner from Toyota

It’s not quite the all clear, but Japanese automakers (and their government-owned Chinese joint-venture partners) breathe a bit easier after receiving April sales numbers for China. Numbers had been down severely after last September’s anti-Japan riots. Latest “figures suggest that the firms are closer to recovering their lost sales,” says The Nikkei [sub].

By now, most of you who care about these things are aware that Toyota today announced an annual net profit of $9.73 billion for the fiscal that ended on March 31, more than three times of what the company made in the year before. By now you probably heard that the “weaker yen” is the reason. Not really, says Toyota, claiming that “effects of FOREX rates” added only $1.5 billion to the bottom line. There is another number you may not have heard.

The mantra before, during, and after the bailout was (and still is) that without the bailout, gadzillions of jobs would have vanished, the American car industry would have been wiped out, wheels would have come off the arsenal of democracy, and the sky would have fallen into Lake St. Clair. Of course, that’s nonsense. There are more than enough other carmakers in America. They would have received the sales, and added the jobs. They would have been mostly non-union jobs though.

The truth is, without the bailout, the UAW would have vanished, and with it millions of Democratic votes.

There probably is no other major car market where oil-burners play less of a role than in Japan. Even diesel-averse Americans buy more. Excitement about brown diesel wagons notwithstanding, diesel-powered cars limp along at around 3 percent market share in America. In Japan, where diesel-powered cars were banned from the streets of Tokyo 14 years ago, and where they carry the onus of being smelly, their market share is below miniature one percent. In both markets, there are hopes for a big diesel turn-around.

In some ways my initial move across the Pacific was a lot easier than my return. I was at the end of my personal rope when I went to Japan in 1999 and, even though I was stepping into a dead end job, there was nowhere to go but up. Coming home was quite the reverse. Of course I had a job offer, but I had learned the hard way about birds in the hand versus the two in the bush and, truth is, I was scared. I had carved out a nice little life for myself in Japan. I had friends, a decent place to live and, for a change, money in my pocket. I had even purchased a car and a motorcycle, but now it was time to sell out and move on.

April sales in Japan were up 1.5 percent in April, with sales of kei cars lagging behind resurging regular cars while imports surprise.