Nissan Motor Co CEO Carlos Ghosn said the Japanese government’s efforts to rein in the rise of the yen had failed, forcing manufacturers to reduce investment in Japan and shift output elsewhere.
“If the Japanese government wants to really safeguard and develop employment, then something has to be done,” Ghosn said in an interview in New York. “We have been talking about this as an industry for a while. Unfortunately, it keeps happening. It looks like whatever effort has been done so far has not delivered results.”
“We have to have some vision of what is going to be the exchange rate landscape,” he added.
During the past two years, the US dollar has dropped from near ¥91 to just more than ¥76. The trend toward a stronger yen, which has accelerated since April, has forced Nissan to reevaluate investment in future vehicle production and to consider moving more production outside Japan, Ghosn said.
“We have to make investment decisions all the time,” he said. “This is one of the factors that we have to consider when we look at a project and say are we going to do it in Japan or are we going to do it in another country?”
Despite the pressure on Japan’s manufacturing base, Ghosn said there was no sign that global consumer demand was in retreat because of the debt crisis in Europe and economic uncertainty in the US. He said he expected that US vehicle sales would rise next year, without providing a detailed forecast.
“So far there is no sign of weakening, at least in the automotive sector,” he said.
The Japanese government said it would start implementing measures to combat the yen’s strength starting yesterday, the Japanese Cabinet Office said in Tokyo.
Financial institutions that would be involved in lending money from the state-run Japan Bank for International Cooperation to spur overseas purchases were to be notified yesterday, the government said in a statement.
Other measures, which range from providing subsidies for companies struggling to retain workers amid an appreciating currency and extending aid to small enterprises, will be implemented this month and next month, the Cabinet Office said.
The government had already announced the initiatives last week.
In the interview, Ghosn, who also heads Renault SA, said Nissan would build an electric car in China, now the world’s largest vehicle market.
However, he said the automaker was open to using the technology behind its battery-powered Leaf to build a different vehicle for the Chinese market depending on the final form of regulations that Beijing has been preparing on electric vehicles.
“We have the intention to go with an electric car in China, but we are still waiting for the Chinese government,” Ghosn said. “Without any doubt the technology that is the basis of the Nissan Leaf — if it is not the Nissan Leaf itself — will be present in our operations in China.”
Nissan exports the all-electric Leaf from Japan and has plans under way for production in the US and the UK.
Nissan, which trails Toyota Motor Corp in traditional hybrids, projects that all-electric vehicles will account for up to 10 percent of global auto sales by 2020. As of this month, sales of the Nissan Leaf and the Chevrolet Volt, a General Motors Co plug-in that can also be driven in all-electric mode, accounted for about 0.1 percent of US auto sales.
Ghosn said government subsidies in the US and other markets would remain important in increasing sales of electric vehicles, but might be phased out as quickly as two to three years if volumes rise quickly enough.
“We don’t need it forever,” he said. “We need it to boost sales and reach a minimum scale which is going to be a necessity for us to cut the cost and make the car competitive.”
Once annual sales of electric vehicles top 500,000 vehicles, Nissan will have the volume it needs to drive costs down and step away from the reliance on subsidies, Ghosn said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last