- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan have announced plans to join forces and form the world’s third-largest automaker by sales as the industry undergoes dramatic changes in its transition away from fossil fuels.
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This is a panic move because the Japanese car industry wasted a whole lot of time and money on hydrogen instead of EVs
I remember when Physics Girl took Shell money to promote hydrogen powered cars.
It was very suspicious that they never talked about how the hydrogen was produced.
And certainly never about the price of hydrogen. It’s either running the car on fossil fuels with extra steps, or on solar and wind electricity with extra steps. Extra steps cost a lot.
I find her suspicious in general. She sends up some red flags for me, but maybe I’m just being a misogynistic hater without realizing it. Also, she and the Christian military dude (SmarterEveryDay?) have weird chemistry. I’ve asked YouTube to stop showing me anything from them so I’m not an expert. They both kinda creep me out, I don’t know.
Dustin (SmarterEveryDay) has weird energy and not in a good way. It comes off as a little creepy.
I know he and Diana met at some YouTube function and have done collaborations. Even though I know their friends IRL, it was still a bit creepy to me that he went to visit her while she had long COVID right after she got married.
I will say that she didn’t show any red flags for me until after she did the hydrogen cars series. I know creators have to get paid but still…it was like when Aubrey Plaza took Dairy Farmers money and did a commercial for milk.
Very off brand for both of them and lost a whole lot of respect when they did it.
Dustin (SmarterEveryDay) has weird energy and not in a good way. It comes off as a little creepy.
Yeah, for sure. Having been around both evangelicals (especially) and Mormons a lot, I’m pretty sensitive to the “subtle” proselytizing and hate it. And it really comes off to me as if he has a thing for her and is being kinda weird about it, as repressed Christian guys are wont to do (speaking from past personal experience).
I didn’t know anything about the hydrogen stuff until the earlier comment.
Fucking hell state of the world.
Someone can dislike a woman without being misogynistic. Calling every guy that dislikes any particular woman misogynistic is just sexist. Don’t be scared of offending sexists.
And they still are. Toyota and Honda in particular have been spent billions on FUD and harebrained hydrogen projects and then wondering why China is eating their lunch. Meanwhile the doors are closing for non-EV manufacturers in markets which are going all electric coming up to 2030. Japan’s auto industry will probably survive in some form but there could be a lot of casualties.
Hydrogen is still being developed by everyone, it’s just more low key than what Japanese car makers are doing. It’s still a much better means than battery is in the long form. Getting it from renewalable ways is what is taking a lot of the wind out of its sails.
Ok, I see misinformation like this on like every social media site now. I didn’t know it had made it to Lemmy.
So, you know that conversion of energy causes energy loss, right? So how is it that converting that energy four times (original source > electricity > hydrogen > electricity > motion) sounds more efficient to you than converting that energy twice (original source > electricity > motion)?
Especially when you consider that electricity already has a network of well-established, proven, global distribution infrastructure whose transfer loss has been obsessively optimized over the last century, while hydrogen emphatically does not?
From the point of view of pure physics, it makes more sense to charge up a bunch of batteries and put them on a truck than to put a bunch of fuel cells onto that same truck. And remember, you can make those batteries more convenient by sending the electricity through the grid instead.
Charging times are quickly decreasing. They’ll eventually reach a reasonable parity with gas tank fills, but they’ll have become the dominant transportation energy source long before that. The current state of battery technology is the worst that it will ever be, and multiple industries are working together to make them better. Hydrogen pretty much only has wide applications to one industry.
Would all of this have been true if both technologies were starting from zero? Probably not. But electricity has a hundred year head start over hydrogen in the consumer space, and a lot of money is still being put into it. Plus, it’s obviously going to be the eventual winner because physics, so why bother with the transitional source when what we would transition to is already a more mature technology?
The war is long over, and anyone who pretends otherwise is just ignoring the laws of physics.
Edit: I recognize that I’m papering over the transfer loss of electricity > battery > electricity. That’s because the transfer loss of charging a battery is <10%, while the transfer loss of generating hydrogen is >20%.
While I agree that hydrogen is inherently inefficient, most batteries don’t store electricity as such, you’re still going electrical > chemical > electrical.
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Hydrogen, even with fuel cell/electric, is not suitable for rural car owners. It’s only really suitable for vehicles that are constantly running, like freight trucks. Why? Because hydrogen leaks out of any vessel you try to put it in. It’s the smallest element in the universe so it slips past the molecules of whatever sealing material you are using. It will even permeate through solid metal, making said metal brittle in the process. And this problem of course gets worse at higher pressures, which you have to use to get any energy density.
So not only do you have to contend with the terrible efficiency loss of using electricity to create hydrogen only to turn it back into electricity again, a whole bunch of your fuel is constantly leaking out during transport and storage. And then if you use cryogenic hydrogen for the best energy density it gets worse again because you can’t keep it cold enough. It’s constantly boiling off and has to be vented to prevent your tank from exploding.
So even if you solve all the myriad other implementation problems with hydrogen, you’re never escaping the fact that you need to use all your fuel quickly or you’re setting money on fire as it leaks. Not to mention potentially getting stuck because you didn’t drive your car for a few days and now you don’t have the fuel to reach a fill station.
Hence why, if it ever matures enough to become actually viable, it will almost certainly be limited to freight and courier type vehicles. They run near constantly and so burn through fuel fast enough that the leakage isn’t an issue.
No it isn’t, batteries are already better than hydrogen and the newest batteries coming out soon from BYD and CATL are going to please the people that want fast charging to be as fast as going to the pump. It’s over for hydrogen in cars
Hydrogen in cars was dead from the get go, it has very niche use cases for the very few percentage of people who actually drive a shitton of kms per day, now it’s only use case would be trucking, but I feel like that should transition mostly to trains with only final miles being loaded onto trucks and there Battery powered semis are not only viable but better imho.
Getting it from renewalable ways is what is taking a lot of the wind out of its sails.
Could just use that wind to generate renewable energy directly…
They’ll probably build hydrogen based hybrid cars lol
Batteries work great in a city, anywhere else they don’t. This is why hydrogen ICE makes sense.
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Hydrogen ICE is doubling down on hydrogen’s greatest flaw: efficiency. It’ll have some racing applications, but putting it in a common car is stupid as fuck.
Batteries seem to work fine in rural Norway. If you live somewhere warmer and/or with a bigger population or population density than Norway, you should be fine.
Horseless carriages work great in a city, anywhere else they don’t. This is why horse-drawn carriages make sense.
Except you’re saying this in the 1930s.
Batteries work great in a city, anywhere else they don’t. This is why hydrogen ICE makes sense.
I think most are going with hydrogen fuel cell rather than ICE. It’s more efficient, if also more boring.
Edit: why on earth is this being downvoted? Am I wrong? Are manufacturers working on hydrogen combustion now instead of fuel cell? Because a few years ago it was all about fuel cells in that space. So please, let me know if I’m wrong. For the record, I think BEV makes far more sense for the average driver. But HFCV makes sense for something that can build out dedicated refueling infrastructure and benefit more from rapid refueling, like trucking.
The whole point is to get it renewable, otherwise gasoline is even better? Anyway, the race is still on for aviation and heavy freight, and hydrogen/ammonia/methanol would probably have a place there.
Honda is known for quality, and every old Nissan I see falls apart. I hope this doesn’t tank the quality of Honda.
Quality of basically every automaker has tanked post COVID, including Honda. And the prices are highway robbery too, its all a race to the bottom now.
So car-centrism is even more ✨ terrible ✨ now? Golly, who could’ve predicted that relying on and enforcing a single industry for most of our transportation might result in rampant enshittification?
Please. Cars are no more susceptible to enshittification than any other consumer good.
Okay, enjoy your subscription seatwarmers, I guess.
That proves your point how exactly? You can come up with dozens of other products that try to charge a monthly fee to access features that used to be free. Or stuff it completely full of ads. Everything is going to shit.
Re prices.
This is what is pissing me off - I’m subsidizing car manufacturers by not being able to buy cheap Chinese cars, yet the assholes focus on expensive trucks I don’t need. If I’m socializing their losses - I don’t want them building cyber trucks, I want cheap affordable vehicles.
I don’t drive Nissans but a family memebr of mine has forever I don’t mind them and haven’t seen too many issues, im just glad Mitsubishi isn’t a large part of this, yet anyway.
I worked at a mechanic shop years ago and every Nissan that came in was falling apart, but they were all older 90s ones. Seats that don’t stay up, plastic panels broken and missing, glove boxes opened, latches and knobs broken, etc.
I owned a Mitsubishi before and it was like a Honda civic but way lower quality. It held up ok except when the brakes didn’t want to work when I really needed them. Yes I rear ended a few times until I decided to SCRAP the car at the junkers.
I owned several Hondas and they all were good quality (mostly 80-90s and a 2000). Usually basic maintenance it all it needed.
I think the poor condition of most Nissans, at least in the US, says a lot less about the cars themselves than it does about the type of people who inevitably own them.
My brother loves his xterra so much he is on his 3rd (first was an accident, second went to the ex in the divorce). I rarely ride in it, but it seems kinda like a rattle trap to me. I dont know how much of that is his abuse and how much is the car.
I’m on my 2nd Frontier as the first one was taken out by a red light are optional driver. My 2nd one I bought used for cheap because the previous owner didn’t take care of it at all. Other than doing such a poor job trying to fix a head gasket leak I had to send the block to a machine shop to get an insert put in for a head bolt. It’s also had low end knocking caused by worn bearing the whole time I’ve had it. I’ve put almost 100k on it and it just keeps trucking! It is a shitbox though, but it’s MY shitbox lol
red light are optional driver
It was a BMW driver, wasn’t it?
A Prius actually!
Gotta stay out of their way! They needed to coast through that light to keep the MPG above 40! 😂
I have a Prius now so I understand now lol
My 2018 Honda Accord has been a nightmare, and I stubbornly refuse to replace it until it’s 10 years old. I half-wonder if the quality has already started to go downhill.
From the factory, the air conditioner dumped all of its condensation onto the passenger-seat floorboards. Since then, I’ve had to get the AC unit replaced twice.
EVERYTHING rattles in that car – the seatbelt mounts, the visors, all kinds of stuff inside the front console (maybe inside the ventilation system?), the front defroster bezel, and the trim around the back window. It drives me absolutely bonkers.
I’d actually been hoping Nissan would get their shit together in regards to their CVT transmissions… because my favorite car over the years was my 2003 Nissan Maxima.
…I guess I should see what Mazda has to offer…
Yikes, sorry to hear about your accord! That’s just crazy.
I stopped caring about cars newer than about 2012 or so, when they all got touch screen info centers that sell the driving data to the insurance companies. Just makes me sick.
My anecdotal experience with Mazdas have been generally really good
I had a 2002 Protege5 for 15 yrs. Besides normal wear items, it was solid. I only sold it because family meant I needed a larger vehicle. I do miss it at times though. Just got a CX-90 for my wife, so here’s hoping we get the same results. I tend to average about 15yrs on a car so far and I’d like to keep that number up.
I know it’s anecdotal…but my 2019 Odyssey has so far needed a lot more work than my 2013 Passat. Considering I got both of them at 1 year old.
This is completely counter to most expectations.
honda are having a lot more lemons lately, my 2020-ish CRV was a lemon that wouldn’t start after a few days. my previous hondas were great but that one (especially how they responded to it) drove me away from the brand for good.
The Odyssey just had a dead battery yesterday. Thats permissible, it’s cold out, she’s taking a lot of short trips (out getting last minute gifts on the big retail stroad), and the battery is 5 years old.
The battery died in the movie theater parking lot (getting gift cards), and that’s how we found out that the only way to get it into neutral was to turn a little knob under the air filter with a pair of pliers, and hold it in place while moving the car.
Otherwise, the car must be running to shift into neutral. Who the fuck came up with that idea. Like, I understand the brake-shift-interlock. This was a push button shifter, and this was the override they chose.
So it was either wait for everybody to finish the Sunday matinee of Wicked so someone can move their car and I could slip in to jump it from mine…or buy a battery and get tools and replace it there in the parking lot.
I chose the latter. Didn’t want to drive all the way home, though, and I “knew” I was missing all my 10mm sockets…fortunately BJs had a nice DeWalt mechanics toolset on clearance, and that plus the battery cost less than just a battery at the parts store.
So it was either wait for everybody to finish the Sunday matinee of Wicked so someone can move their car and I could slip in to jump it from mine…or buy a battery and get tools and replace it there in the parking lot.
If you had your new battery and your jumper cables, there would be no reason to buy the tools. You put your new battery on the ground and jump you car from it. Your car will run on the power from the alternator with a completely dead battery. Without turning off the now running car, disconnect the jumper cables and drive the car home where your tools are.
Don’t tell my wife that. And honestly I knew that. I just wanted an excuse to buy a matching socket set.
My last one was a “task force” mechanic set that my parents got me nearly over 20 years ago when I got my license.
American Passat or euro? My dad’s 2012 has been rock solid
Chattanooga!
I’m sure mergers have improved things, but all the recent meegers I can think of have made thibgs worse. My guess is that it will be a net negative for Honda, although they are dragging their feet hard enough on EVs and hybrids that they were heading down that path anyway.
every old Nissan I see falls apart
That says a lot more about the owners than it does about the vehicles.
I guess, the owners took their cars into the shop to fix (X) and nothing else, even though there was so much wrong they didn’t want it fixed.
I had a '92 Nissan D21 truck. I bought it in 2015 with 120k miles for $2000 in great condition. Drove it another 150k miles, only needed to replace the starter, shocks and struts, and a battery (with other regular maintenance of course). Sold it two years later for $2000. One of the best trucks I’ve ever had.
Maybe it was just the models I saw that fell apart, not every Nissan. The only ones I saw that bad were the ones that came into the shop to have something fixed unrelated to all the broken stuff.
Nissans post-Renault partnership might be questionable in areas. 70s, 80s, 90s Nissan engineering was superior to Honda as far as I’m concerned. I’ve taken multiple old Datsuns/Nissans north of 300k miles with very few problems.
I still see a lot of Datsuns on the road. Always wanted a little pickup like theirs.
This is a bad idea. As someone comes from a “Honda family”, I drive a Honda because I don’t want a Nissan.
This feels like the quality of Hondas get to drop while the cost of Nissans get to jump. I fail to see how this benefits anyone.
Alternative take: Honda fucked up by not going the EV route, now they’re behind. Nissan built a fuckton of Leafs and probably has at least some decent in-house EV expertise built up. Best case scenario you get good Honda EVs.
It’s probably not going to be the best case scenario, though.
Things aren’t always black and white. It could turn out to be an okay intermediate. I’m not too mad about the loss of competition here because there are quite a few new EV makers that are attempting to succeed in the market.
Fun Fact. 1st Gen Nissan Leaf’s have such bad battery capacity that they have no resale value but they are very popular in southeast Alaska where gas prices are high and there really isn’t anywhere to go (they are all islands) so a 60 mile range isn’t a handicap.
That’s fair and that makes sense to me.
The merger isn’t supposed to help consumers. It’s to help businesses that are incapable of keeping up and need support. The Japanese government has a history of merging companies together to ensure that they stay competitive. MITI did it in the 70s to Japanese technology companies like Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, etc. most of those are still around today and even leading the industry.
Again, this isn’t to help any consumers.
No it’s not going to be like that. I think they’re going to exchange patents and things like that to catch up to the EV markets. The Japanese are very conservative when it comes to technology, believe it or not. Because of the older people being higher in hierarchy. They don’t like change and disruption. Meanwhile in Korea and China, things have been moving fast and following the trends.
China is getting tarrifed out of the market, it’s really only Hyundai/Kia now to push the envelope at the moment and force competition (for EVs)
As an owner of a Nissan I am thrilled Honda is bailing them out. I need those spare parts to flow.
Are you worried that this is like when Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas but the MD businessmen shoved out the engineers who ran Boeing?
As an aside I didn’t love my Honda but it didn’t require an engine replacement out of warranty like my Nissan did. I appreciated that Nissan did the right thing but it was concerning to need a new engine due to a manufacturing defect.
We’re just going to have to spend the next 20 years researching each model to figure out whether it was made by nissan guys in nissan plants or honda guys in honda plants. It will probably realistically be functionally separated for a long time. Hopefully, everything will settle closer to honda quality.
They’ll probably continue Nissan as the cheapest brand.
If you want a luxury Honda, you should already just buy Acura.
luxury != quality
I’ve already long thought of Acura, Lexus, Infiniti etc. as Hondas, Toyotas and Nissans with leather seats and fake wood dashboards.
That’s because that’s what they are. Plus a different styling, but i digress.
Gotta appease that North American need for “luxury”.
Thing is I can’t think of an actual “luxury” car on the American market short of Rolls Royce. Because everyone makes “luxury sports.” Like my dad’s Toyota Avalon that has way more horsepower than a front wheel drive full size sedan deserves.
Give me a modern ‘78 El Dorado land yacht with quilted leather pillow seats that drives like a cumulus cloud across the summer sky. I like Rolls’ approach to horsepower: “Sufficient.” It has plenty of power to deliver Sir to his destination in extreme comfort and quiet.
Yup, I hear BMW durability ain’t what it should be. And I’m not even a car guy.
They get Mitsubishi in the deal since Nissan is their majority owner, so it will continue to be the budget nameplate most likely.
Nissan fans?
What this really is, is the first major OEM casualty from the EV transition.
Nissan was in deep deep trouble. This merger is a lifeline, they needed it to survive.
Probably should have put some fans on the battery for the Leaf lol
If they expanded their lineup to be based on the Leaf EV instead of just leaving it a lil econobox and focusing on their god aweful CVT they may have had been a great early EV competitor. Instead, ownership just kept sucking and sucking the company dry
The amount of time they used that awful CVT would make Ford and GM blush
Ya, they really fucked things up. They were so well positioned with their early start if they’d done things better and didn’t rest on it.
What sucks is that the leaf was a fairly sensible econobox and it was one of the most affordable EVs you could get. All they had to do was build on that!
Mergers should be illegal.
Yup, either build talent in-house or poach the workers with higher pay and better salaries.
Nonsan? Honsan? Nonda?
NISONDA
Acfiniti? Infinura?
Just bring back Datsun. Ok maybe compromise and make it Hotsun.
Nonda kinda slaps ngl
Datda? Hondsun?
Uu an s. O
Whelp, Renault is getting super fucked. Bailing out Nissan was a mistake.
How so? Renault had a massive stake and likely made bank while Nissan did well in the US, and they’ll probably get a good deal on their shares with this merger. They’re probably making out like bandits.
Expect less competition and higher prices
Really? I thought the competition these days was coming from China, not from Nissan
Problem is - Chinese cars don’t make it to us. Because tariffs.
So end result is less competition on us market and higher prices.
Didn’t you mean Japan? Nissan isn’t a country.
Trump’s tariffs are going to cause higher prices. I hardly think going from 40 auto companies to 39 will make much of a difference. Especially, compared to the problem I mentioned.
Nissan’s failures: Trash CVT, Toyota prices, failed to expand their e-Power (series) Hybrid, missed the small pick-up truck in the USA, ignored the sub $20k EV and they allowed shitty Tesla to grab the EV market. It means Mitsubishi will end up with Honda and Nissan.
No word from Renault?
Bah. Their CVTs have been pretty decent since the 2018 revision. Don’t care about EVs, though they have a more proven platform in the Leaf than Honda has. The Frontier is one of the best selling (and best) small/mid-size trucks in the US. I think it’s the only one still actually made on a truck frame.
So glad they’re seemingly done with Renault. Nissan engineering quality was top notch before that infernal partnership.
The Frontier’s Q3 sales of ~16k were outpaced by the Ranger (21k) Colorado (29k), Maverick (45k), and Tacoma (57k). It did outsell the Ridgeline (13k) and Canyon (10k).
I know there are ebs and flows as models change over, but I don’t think either Nissan truck has ever been close to the front of the pack.
I thought the $20k EV segment was just impossible because just the battery alone costs $15k
The new Hyundai Inster starts at 22 290 euros in Slovakia( and cars here are more expensive than the US), it is very much possible for car companies that have actual scale and don’t waste resources on developing cybertrucks
This is just too soon. I’m still shook up over losing Datsun in the 80s.
We owned a Datsun… and rolled it, many times on purpose. Sorry mom.
Gross.
Honsan or Nisda?
Honissan.
Hondatsun
You win
Hondussy
Is it then called Hondan or Nissa?
It’s crazy how much of the car market has already been consolidated. They just keep putting out cars with other makes, even if they are owned by the same company. Hyundai and Kia are a perfect example.
Wait till you find out how many components are shared, all the new mazda Hybrids use Toyota’s power train, while the Toyota Supra uses BMW’s B58 engine.
This Honda Nissan situation is basically what happened with Hyundai and Kia in the past, Kia was struggling so Hyundai bought most of it.
Economies of scale are needed nowadays, lots of shared parts, Kia/Hyundai sell the same vehicles, just with different stylings and minor differentiators.
VW group is entire tiered system with some engines reserved for Audis. VW, Skoda and Seat are once again basically the same cars with different flavors, but for example the latest VW passat was built by Skoda.
Hissan
HONDANISSAN
It’ll probably be something boring like:
HondaNissan Automotive Group
Ninda
