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Why Mergers of Carmakers Like Honda and Nissan Often Falter

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The Japanese companies are considering joining forces to survive in a rapidly changing auto industry, but auto history is filled with troubled and failed marriages.The Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan are discussing a possible merger, in a bid to share costs and help themselves compete in a fast-changing and increasingly competitive industry.But a merger, even of two companies from the same country, is no guarantee of success, and the history of automotive deals is littered with failures and disappointments.Combining two large, global manufacturing operations is an incredibly difficult feat that involves reconciling different technologies, models and approaches to doing business. A merger’s success rests on getting ambitious managers and engineers who have spent decades competing with one another to cooperate. Teams and projects have to be scrapped or changed, and executives must cede power to others. In some cases, the merging companies are hamstrung by elected leaders who force them to keep operating money-losing factories.Thomas Stallkamp, an automotive consultant based in Michigan, was involved in the struggles of one of the biggest auto mergers, the 1998 merger of Chrysler and the German company Daimler. Mr. Stallkamp spent years in senior roles at Chrysler and DaimlerChrysler.“Car companies are big, complicated organizations, with large engineering staffs, manufacturing plants all over the world, hundreds of thousands of employees, in a capital-intensive business,” Mr. Stallkamp said. “You try to put two of them together and you run into a lot of egos and infighting, so it’s very, very difficult to make it work.”Honda and Nissan announced plans this year to work together on electric vehicles, and on Monday they formally began talks about extending that cooperation to a merger that could also include Mitsubishi Motors, a smaller manufacturer that works closely with Nissan. A pairing would unite Japan’s second- and third-biggest automakers, after Toyota, and create a company that would be the third largest in the world by number of cars produced, after Toyota and Volkswagen.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.S. Factory Towns Laid Low by the ‘China Shock’ Are Benefiting From New Investments

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    Communities that suffered the worst of plant closings in recent decades are now gaining an outsize share of fresh investment and new jobs.For much of the last half century, economic life in the heart of North Carolina has been dominated by factory closings, joblessness and downgraded expectations. Textile mills and furniture plants have been undercut by low-priced imports from Mexico and China. Tobacco processing jobs have disappeared.Yet over the last several years, an infusion of investment in cutting-edge industries like biotechnology, computer chips and electric vehicles has lifted the fortunes of long-struggling communities.North Carolina presents a conspicuous example of this trend, yet a similar story is playing out elsewhere. From industrial swaths of the Midwest to factory towns in the South, areas that suffered the most wrenching downsides of trade are now capturing the greatest shares of investment into forward-tilting industries, according to research from the Brookings Institution, a public policy research organization in Washington.As furniture manufacturing and textile jobs vanished, Chatham County, N.C., suffered the consequences for decades.Sebastian Siadecki for The New York TimesThe Plant in Pittsboro, N.C., is home to a variety of small businesses and includes outdoor event spaces and restaurants.Sebastian Siadecki for The New York TimesBrookings researchers examined pledges of private investment across the United States, using data compiled by the Biden administration as part of its campaign to subsidize domestic production of computer chips and electric vehicles. They also tapped a Massachusetts Institute of Technology database that tracks investments in clean energy. Over the last three years, $736 billion in investment has been promised for these key industries, the researchers found.When they mapped the investments, the Brookings team concluded that nearly a third of the total is flowing into communities that experienced the worst effects of the so-called China Shock — the factory closures that followed China’s entry to the global trading system in 2001.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    G.M.’s Electric Vehicle Sales Surge as Ford Loses Billions

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    Ford is struggling to make money on battery-powered models while General Motors, which started more slowly, says it is getting close to that goal.In the race to be second to Tesla in the U.S. electric vehicle market, Ford Motor leaped to an early lead four years ago over its crosstown rival, General Motors, with the Mustang Mach E, an electric sport utility vehicle with a design and a name that nodded to its classic sports car.But the contest looks much different today.Sales of G.M.’s battery-powered models are starting to surge as the company begins to reap its big investments in standardized batteries and new factories. Ford’s three electric models, including the F-150 Lightning pickup truck and a Transit van, are still selling well but are racking up billions of dollars of losses.The latest view into how Ford’s quick-start strategy has run into trouble came on Monday, when the company reported that its electric vehicle division lost $1.2 billion before interest and taxes from July to September. In the first nine months of the year, it lost $3.7 billion.Ford’s chief financial officer, John Lawler, said it was a “solid quarter,” noting that revenue had risen for the 10th quarter in a row, by 5 percent to $46.2 billion. But the company’s overall profit of $896 million in the third quarter was down 24 percent from a year earlier, largely because of problems with electric vehicles, warranty costs and other factors.“Our strategic advantages are not falling to the bottom line the way they should because of cost,” Mr. Lawler said.Ford made an early entry into the electric vehicle market compared to other established automakers with the Mustang Mach E.David Zalubowski/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Elon Musk Might Use His Pull With Trump to Help Tesla

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    Although Donald Trump has opposed policies that favor electric cars, if he becomes president he could ease regulatory scrutiny of Tesla or protect lucrative credits and subsidies.Former President Donald J. Trump has promised, if he is re-elected, to do away with Biden administration policies that encourage the use and production of electric cars. Yet one of his biggest supporters is Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, which makes nearly half the electric vehicles sold in the United States.Whether or not Mr. Trump would carry out his threats against battery-powered cars and trucks, a second Trump administration could still be good for Tesla and Mr. Musk, auto and political experts say.Mr. Musk has spent more than $75 million to support the Trump campaign and is running a get-out-the-vote effort on the former president’s behalf in Pennsylvania. That will almost surely earn Mr. Musk the kind of access he would need to promote Tesla.But Mr. Musk would also have to confront a big gap between his Washington wish list and Mr. Trump’s agenda.While Mr. Musk rarely acknowledges it, Tesla has collected billions of dollars from programs championed by Democrats like President Biden that Mr. Trump and other Republicans have vowed to dismantle.In Michigan, a battleground state and home to many auto factories, the Trump campaign has run ads that claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, wants to “end all gas-powered cars” — a position that she does not hold.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    E.V. Tax Credits Are a Plus, but Flaws Remain, Study Finds

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    The Inflation Reduction Act was a compromise between competing priorities. Evaluating the law on the effectiveness of the $7,500 tax credit for E.V.s is tricky.A team of economists has taken on a central component of the Inflation Reduction Act: the $7,500 tax credit for U.S.-made electric vehicles.The challenge in evaluating it is that the policy has sometimes conflicting goals. One is getting people to buy electric vehicles to lower carbon emissions and slow climate change. The other is strengthening U.S. auto manufacturing by denying subsidies to foreign companies, even for better or cheaper electric vehicles.That’s why totaling those pluses and minuses is complex, but overall the researchers found that Americans have seen a two-to-one return on their investment in the new electric vehicle subsidies. That includes environmental benefits, but mostly reflects a shift of profits to the United States. Before the climate law, tax credits were mainly used to buy foreign-made cars.“What the I.R.A. did was swing the pendulum the other way, and heavily subsidized American carmakers,” said Felix Tintelnot, an associate professor of economics at Duke University who was a co-author of the paper.Those benefits were undermined, however, by a loophole allowing dealers to apply the subsidy to leases of foreign-made electric vehicles. The provision sends profits to non-American companies, and since those foreign-made vehicles are on average heavier and less efficient, they impose more environmental and road-safety costs.Also, the researchers estimated that for every additional electric vehicle the new tax credits put on the road, about three other electric vehicle buyers would have made the purchases even without a $7,500 credit. That dilutes the effectiveness of the subsidies, which are forecast to cost as much as $390 billion through 2031. “The I.R.A. was worth the money invested,” said Jonathan Smoke, the chief economist at Cox Automotive, which provided some of the data used in the analysis. “But in essence, my conclusion is that we could do better.”How the Environmental and Safety Costs of Gas- and Electric-Powered Cars Stack UpMeasuring the cost to society of carbon emissions from driving and manufacturing, local air pollutants and the danger of crashes, a new economic analysis finds that some gas-powered vehicles are less damaging than electric and hybrid vehicles.

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    The five least and most costly gas- and electric-powered vehicles
    Averages are weighted by the number of each model registered within each powertrain category. Total costs subtract fiscal benefits from gas taxes and electricity bills.Source: Hunt Allcott, Stanford; Joseph Shapiro, U.C. Berkeley; Reigner Kane and Max Maydanchik, University of Chicago; and Felix Tintelnot, Duke UniversityBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Ford Pulls Back Its Electric Vehicle Push

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    The automaker said it would invest less in battery-powered cars and scrap a planned electric three-row sport utility vehicle.Ford Motor, which had once hoped to race ahead of other established automakers in electric vehicles, is again slowing the pace of its investments and new battery-powered models.The automaker said on Wednesday that it would delay the introduction of a new large electric pickup truck by about 18 months, to 2027, and scrap a three-row electric sport utility vehicle.The company is also reducing the amount of money it plans to spend on electric vehicles in an effort to stem multibillion-dollar losses on the technology, while adding plans to introduce a new electric delivery van in 2026. A new medium-size electric pickup is expected in 2027 as well, the company said.“The competitive nature of the market is changing globally,” Ford’s chief financial officer, John Lawler, said in a conference call. “That means these vehicles need to be profitable, and if not, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions.”Mr. Lawler said investments in electric vehicles would now account for about 30 percent of the company’s capital budget, down from 40 percent. The company will take a charge of $400 million to account for the cost of manufacturing equipment it purchased for the production of the canceled electric S.U.V., and it may have up to $1.5 billion in additional expenses related to the project.“This is certainly not great news in terms of Ford’s progress on E.V.s,” said Sam Abuelsamid, a principal research analyst at Guidehouse Insights, a research firm. “Clearly they have not yet come to grips with cost-reduced E.V.s and getting more affordable products on the market.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Ford Plans More Gas Trucks, Fewer Electric Vehicles

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    Ford, General Motors and other automakers are slowing investments in electric vehicles and doubling down on more profitable gasoline cars and trucks.For much of the last five years, automakers have been spending billions of dollars in a frantic race to develop electric vehicles and build factories to produce them, with expectations that consumers would flock to these new models.But in the past 12 months, the growth rate of electric vehicle sales has slowed sharply as some car buyers have balked at the high prices of electric cars and trucks and the hassles of charging them, especially on long trips.The shift in consumer sentiment is now forcing many automakers to pull back on aggressive investment plans, and pivot, at least partly, back to the internal-combustion engine vehicles that still account for most new car sales and a large share of corporate profits.The latest example came on Thursday when Ford Motor said it would retool a plant in Canada to produce large pickup trucks rather than the electric sport-utility vehicles it had previously planned to make there.Ford’s move comes a day after General Motors said it expected to make 200,000 to 250,000 battery-powered cars and trucks this year, about 50,000 fewer than it had previously forecast.“After the pandemic, there was a huge exuberance around E.V.s, and I think a lot of the manufacturers thought that growth was going to continue,” said Arun Kumar, a partner and managing director in the automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners, a consulting firm. “But the reality is that’s not the case, and it’s a smart move to make sure you’re not losing market share in internal combustion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Tesla Sales Down, GM and Toyota Up Slightly in 2nd Quarter

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    High interest rates, economic uncertainty and a cyberattack appear to have dampened sales in the three months through June.Much of the auto industry, with the notable exception of Tesla, reported modest sales growth in the three months through June as high interest rates, high vehicle prices and uncertainty about the economy weighed on consumers.Sales in late June were also slowed by disruptions at car dealers stemming from a cyberattack on a company that supplies software and data services to dealerships.Cox Automotive, a market research firm, estimated on Tuesday that 4.1 million new cars and trucks were sold in the second quarter in the United States, up a little from the period in 2023. That’s a marked slowdown from the year’s first three months, when sales grew 5 percent. In the first six months of 2024, 7.9 million new vehicles were sold, an increase of 3 percent from the first half of last year, Cox said.Slow growth is likely to continue through the end of the year, said Jonathan Smoke, Cox’s chief economist. “The market is roiled by uncertainty,” he said. “We probably can’t quite keep the pace of sales of the first half, but we aren’t expecting a collapse in sales.”Cox has forecast that 15.9 million new cars and trucks will be sold in the United States this year. That would be an increase from the 15.5 million sold last year, but still well below the 17 million vehicles sold annually before the pandemic.General Motors said on Tuesday that it sold nearly 700,000 cars and light trucks in the United States in the second quarter, an increase of less than 1 percent from the period last year. The company said it was its best performance since the fourth quarter of 2020.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.A.W. Reaches Accord on Pay and Safety at E.V. Battery Plant

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    The agreement, if ratified, will cover 1,600 workers making batteries for General Motors in Ohio. The union said it would be a model for efforts elsewhere.The United Automobile Workers union on Monday announced a tentative contract agreement at an Ohio factory making batteries for electric vehicles, a step that it called a milestone in enhancing pay and safety in the E.V. supply chain.The accord covers 1,600 workers at a Lordstown plant operated by Ultium Cells, a joint venture between General Motors and a South Korean partner, LG Energy Solution. It produces batteries for G.M. electric vehicles.The workers had not been unionized when the plant opened in 2022, but they were brought into the U.A.W. under the terms of the national contract the union negotiated with G.M. last fall. This new contract, subject to ratification by the plant’s workers, defines wages and working conditions specific to that location.Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. president, said in a letter to union members that the accord was “a game changer for the electric vehicle battery industry.”G.M. and Ultium issued statements saying they were pleased with the agreement.The union said it planned to use the Ultium Cells contract as a template as it negotiated local agreements at other battery plants that G.M. and its Detroit rivals are building. G.M. started production this year at a battery plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., and has another under construction in Lansing, Mich.Ford Motor plans two battery plants in Kentucky, one in Tennessee and one in Michigan. Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram vehicles, plans two battery plants in Indiana. Aside from one Ford location, those plants involve joint ventures that were brought under the U.A.W. umbrella under the national contracts the union signed with Ford and Stellantis last fall.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More