Japan could face a collapse of the auto industry

[harm_less]

The Japanese economy's heavy reliance on its auto sector and the failure of the companies in that sector to pursue, or even take seriously, the moves of the world's markets, and particularly the Chinese, towards EVs is increasingly looking like a perfect storm.

This presentation which is from the same series as the one I posted earlier in the farming category provides a wider perspective of what is in play over the coming years.

Oh yes I think ive seen that, its quite disruptive.
I guess we all have Elon Musk to thank for spearheading this.
It might not be too late for Japan if they act now, but many companies seem to be in denial over the whole thing and appear to show little interest to innovate.
Nissan actually was in a good position early on with the leaf despite the models drawbacks, and could have introduced more EV models that were better.
Honda is the only other company with an EV model and looks like they are shifting production to China, and even then its essentially a redesigned model from their partner in China.
I think Toyota is redesigning their factorys in Japan, hence why they are in so much debt.

The rate of change resulting from these disruptive changes in the key sectors of our economy (energy, information, food, transport and materials) is absolutely overwhelming the organisations/businesses who have previously supplied those goods and services.

Here in New Zealand the rate at which EVs and PV have been taken up has left power utilities, government regulators, primary producers, vehicle suppliers and oil companies, among others struggling to keep up. Case in point the government's recent budget announcement on funding 23 rapid charging hubs NZ wide as they have correctly identified that a lack of public EV charging is restricting EV uptake. Installing hubs of the size they are suggesting is more than just a case of choosing a piece of real estate and moving in some charging units as the rate of electricity required to charge multiple EVs at DC rates requires some pretty grunty current. In many cases the local grid just doesn't have the capacity to support such demand.

Here in New Plymouth the local Council has plans to add numerous EVs to their fleet over the coming years but the grid infrastructure to its premises is only capable of supporting a few level 2 (7kW) chargers rather than several level 3 (25kW+ DC) chargers as is required for timely daytime charging of their EVs. That grid shortfall is typical for that area of the New Plymouth CBD which includes where the existing ChargeNet 50kW public charger is sited, which incidentally recently went offline because of supply issues. My sister who nurses in Auckland advises me that a similar situation exists for the EV fleet at the hospital she works at.

Note too the clumsy approach to addressing AI control measures we're seeing lately in NZ, and further afield. That technology is moving hugely faster than TPTB can implement control over it. That situation is a cause for concern especially as we head into an election campaign.

I'm presently planning an increase in our PV capacity which I would like to add battery storage to but the idea of spending ~$20K on batteries when we have far more storage capacity in our EV batteries than any home battery could viably provide seems ridiculous. For the equivalent capacity that our Polestar has in it would cost in access of $200K. One of the major barriers to heading down the V2G path (powering our home from the car) is that our lines company seems to be years away from developing the regulatory measures or physical design parameters for V2G to be possible. Of course we are dealing with a power supply structure that sees distributed generation and EVs as a threat so any advances will be an uphill struggle.