This November, we receive the financial results of Japanese automakers for the first half of their fiscal year, which ends at the end of March. Awaiting of Nissan, which will only be made public this week, we can look at those of Toyota and Honda, which already reveal the unequal exposure of Japanese carmakers to the decline in global demand that is now taking shape.

 

From this point of view, Toyota impresses by posting increasing volumes, sales and results.
Toyota sold 4.64 million vehicles from April to September, 220,000 more than last year. Its turnover increased by 600 billion yen (almost 5 billion euros), i.e. by 4%, and its operating income by 140 billion yen (1.16 billion euros, +11%). Its operating margin was 8.6% of turnover for the first half of the previous year, compared to 9.2% for the first six months of 2020.

 

As we are informed in late October of the financial results for the third quarter of 2019 of the automotive groups, a rather difficult year 2019 is looming for most manufacturers and everything suggests that things will not improve in 2020: a large majority of markets are on a downward trend and it is imperative to continue investing.

 

Investing for a carmaker means both feeding the "business as usual" by regularly renewing the products. It also means, of course, launching or developing in new fields by setting up in countries where it was not present, or not enough, by creating new brands or by developing R&D skills that were not its own until then.
In all these cases, there is a need to spend now and, in most cases, several years in a row, expecting future revenues that may or may not become a reality.

The show goes on and the last episode was the brutal eviction of Thierry Bolloré (Renault's CEO) on Friday.

 

This is willingly commented on as the counterpart to Saikawa's which would have been desired by the Nissans and - as some presume - agreed by Jean-Dominique Senard (Renault's Chairman) that the trio of leadership candidates should be put in the order he wanted to see prevail.
The government and the agency of state shareholdings ("APE3: Agence des Participations de l'Etat) which, after having wished for the Renault-Nissan merger and having favourably considered the Renault-FCA operation, seem to have finally understood since the beginning of June that the relaunch of the Alliance should be the priority given to J.-D. Senard would have validated the option. The undertaking would therefore mainly be a process of "de-ghosnisation" of the top management of the two companies necessary for a new start.

 

If this interpretation contains some truth, it is probably a little short, however.

For decades, private and public transport have formed an irreconcilable couple, an irreconcilable opposition.

 

The former were expanding spontaneously, allowing urban sprawl, eating all the space and generating pollution and congestion.        
It was then considered - not without reason - that it was imperative to organise the "modal shift" by taxing the car, making parking difficult and expensive and organising congestion. Conversely, public transport deserved to be massively subsidised and to be a priority in the allocation of state and local authority public speding as well as in the allocation of space. Through hard work, this dichotomous approach has finally achieved some success in major cities where the car has actually backed down.
However, due to the inability of these and other public policies (land and development) to contain urban land price growth and/or to match employment and residential location, urban sprawl has continued, mobility needs have increased, public transport has not been able to cover them, the number of vehicles per household has continued to increase and there are now two deadlocks.