Honda will close its Japanese Sayama factory
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Honda will close its Japanese Sayama factory
- Honda has announced that it will stop producing cars at one of its plants in Japan by 2022, reducing its capacity by nearly 25% in its domestic market, i.e. 300,000 units out of 1,200,000.
- The manufacturer believes that the Japanese market will remain sluggish over the next few years and that it can meet local demand with capacity equivalent to 900,000 units per year instead of 1,200,000 units, as they produced no more than 800,000 vehicles in the country in 2016, and will not produce more in 2017.
- Analyzing Honda’s position, we can observe that:
1. Its production in Japan continues to decline while that in China and the USA continues to increase, and is now well beyond Japan production.
2. The Japanese Sayama plant (the historic Honda plant) only produces 12.5% of Honda's production in Japan (compared to 25% in 2010 and 40% in 2005). Indeed, the Sayama factory has been relieved of models that have established abroad or have not found their place on the market.
- Therefore, this plant will be closed in 2022 after the latest models still produced in this plant will be transferred to other under-utilized Honda sites in Japan. The internationalization of Honda production is therefore to the detriment of Japan.
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PSA-Mitsubishi plant in Kaluga could become 100% Mitsubishi
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PSA-Mitsubishi plant in Kaluga could become 100% Mitsubishi
- Starting in 2010, the Kaluga automotive plant in Russia, owned 50% by PSA and 50% by Mitsubishi, produced a total of 36,000 PSA cars and 9,000 Mitsubishi cars in 2011, but since that date, the production volume of PSA Group cars has collapsed: only 5,000 cars produced in 2015, less than 4,000 in 2016 and less than 3,000 in 2017. At this rate, the production of PSA Group cars (Citroën C4 and Peugeot 408) could cease before 2020.
- Mitsubishi production, on the other hand, increased, up to 33,000 units in 2014, before falling to 14,000 in 2016 and less than 12,000 in 2017 (still four times more than PSA).
- In total, PSA has produced 135,000 cars since the construction of the Kaluga plant and Mitsubishi 115,000, which is very far from the capacity of the plant and the objectives of both manufacturers.
- Given that Mitsubishi has recently been bought by the Renault-Nissan group and that the links between PSA and Mitsubishi will be phased out over time (scheduled end of the collaboration in the field of electric cars and SUVs ), it is possible that the Kaluga plant would be abandoned by PSA and taken over by Mitsubishi (to concentrate on the manufacture of its SUV), or closed.
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The decline of diesel offset by a rise in gasoline in Europe
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The decline of diesel offset by a rise in gasoline in Europe
- The market share of diesel in the European Union fell from 50.2% of new car registrations in the first half of 2016 to 46.3% in the first half of 2017, resulting in more than 150,000 diesel cars less.
- This decline was largely offset by an increase in sales of gasoline cars, the market share of hybrid and electric cars remaining very low, around 4% of the market (2.4% of hybrids non-rechargeable, 0.8% rechargeable hybrids and 0.8% 100% electric). Propane and natural gas vehicles account for less than 1.5% of the market share.
- Gasoline cars now account for 48.5% of passenger car registrations in the EU compared to 45.8% last year, which translates into over 300,000 additional gasoline cars.
- Manufacturers warn that the transfer to gasoline engines, with higher CO2 emissions, will pose an additional challenge to achieve future CO2 reduction targets.
- According to them, a sudden change from diesel to gasoline will lead to an increase in CO2 emissions, since the market share of electric engines remains low. They therefore recommend to keep a significant share of diesel cars in new vehicle registrations while waiting for the massive increase of alternative energy cars.
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Like Mercedes, BMW plans to build a factory in Russia
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Like Mercedes, BMW plans to build a factory in Russia
- Following Mercedes, which is building an assembly plant near Moscow, it is the turn of its competitor BMW to announce that it could build an assembly plant in Russia to produce the best selling models of the brand locally, namely the Series 3 and Series 5 sedans, as well as the X1, X3, X4, X5 and X6 SUVs.
- In 2016, BMW sold 27,500 vehicles in Russia, of which 20,000 were locally produced. This is much less than in 2013, when BMW had sold more than 40,000 vehicles, including 30,000 locally produced. The Bavarian manufacturer is currently using a part of the Russian assembler Avtotor’s factory, located in Kaliningrad.
- BMW shares this factory with other manufacturers, such as Hyundai and Kia, and formerly Chevrolet and Opel. The capacity of the Avtotor plant is 250,000 vehicles per year but BMW has never exceeded 30,000 vehicles per year. However, the German manufacturer prefers to have its own factory, because third-party factory rental remains a fragile and not necessarily flexible system.
- For BMW, the revival of the Russian market observed in 2017 and the constant increase in the market share of premium brands in Russia encourages the manufacturer to set up in the country, with its own resources, like Mercedes, so as to be able to produce almost all of its cars sold in Russia, i.e. 40,000 to 50,000 vehicles per year.
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Renault brand will sell hybrid vehicles
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Renault brand will sell hybrid vehicles
- Among the alternative energy engines, the Renault-Nissan group has so far favored the electric motor, becoming, in a short time, the world's largest manufacturer of electric cars, thanks mainly to the Renault Zoe, Renault Kangoo ZE, Nissan Leaf and Nissan e-NV200.
- With the acquisition of Mitsubishi in 2017, the Renault-Nissan group now has a plug-in hybrid vehicle in its range (Mitsubishi Outlander), of which nearly 11,000 have been sold worldwide in the first half of 2017. This type of engine will now be applied on Renault and Nissan models.
- Hybridization seems, according to Carlos Ghosn, a response adapted to the programmed reduction of diesel which will become more expensive due to the cost of future anti-pollution standards, and which is already undergoing a clear decline in Europe, its principal market (46.3% of the market in the first half of 2017 compared with 50.2% in the first half of 2016), mainly due to the Dieselgate scandal, and the increasingly strict measures, in force or announced, concerning diesel vehicles in cities.
- Thus in 2022, Renault will have more than one diesel engine (1600) instead of three today (1500, 1600, 2000). The thermal engines will represent 50% of the range, while the hybrid engines (12 new models) will represent 30% and the all-electric engines (8 new models) 20%.
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