Originally Posted by
Arapiles
First, "Japs" is a racist term and I'm surprised that you think that it's OK to use.
Second, I don't know if your comment was aimed at me because of my post about the Tokyo Mobility Show, but let me set you straight on a few things:
1. I've lived in and out of Japan for the last 34 years - at one point I'd spent more of my adult life in Japan than Australia;
2. I speak Japanese and went to Uni here;
3. I was an adviser to several large Japanese car-companies in my area of professional expertise, and also to several European makers operating in Japan - so I know the market and the companies in a way that I suspect few non-Japanese would: certainly not the Australian car journalists who are largely clueless;
4. I've been to multiple Tokyo Motor Shows, beginning in 1991 - I'm in Japan at present, primarily to go to the Motor Show, which I went to on Monday. I'll probably go again tomorrow.
So, in my honest opinion - the Japanese car companies are ****ed. Unlike other years there was nothing of particular interest on any of their stands. There was nothing that pointed to any thinking about the future. Three even had "sky cars", basically large drones, which will never be a thing and suggest that they had no other ideas. The most popular thing on the Honda stand wasn't even a car, it was a mocked-up fueselage of a Honda Jet - the queue to sit in that was up to 75 minutes. The foreign journalists get carted around on days that are closed to the public so have no idea what the Japanese public are interested in. From my observations, they were interested in the new GTR, the new MX-5 / RX-9 (looked like an RX to me, and nothing like an MX-5), the Honda/Sony collaboration and interestingly, the new Toyota Century SUV, which is Toyota's take on a Bentagya. Even more interestingly, I haven't even seen it mentioned in any foreign coverage of the show. And the Japanese public were really, really interested in the BYD stand - it was 6 people deep around every vehicle. And the presenters on the BYD stand I spoke to were multi-lingual when I don't think I spoke to a single person on any of the Japanese stands that could converse in English.
There were also some broader issues that point to systemic issues in Japan - prior to going to the show the TMS website said that you could buy tickets at the gate - which is what I've done every other time I've gone. It also said that the gates opened at 9.00am. When I got there it turned out that you couldn't buy tickets at the gate and I had go on-line on my phone and buy them - and then get a physical ticket from a 7-11 (cf, why couldn't I show them an electronic one or QR code, which is standard pretty much everywhere these days) which promptly closed when myself and about a hundred Japanese attendees tried to do so. And the gates didn't open at 9.00am, they opened at 10.00am. It was a complete ****ing shemozzle. There would've been 5,000 people lined up there at 10.00am.
I had dinner the following night with an older Japanese friend who's very connected and I basically told him the above and he just winced. He, and a lot of other Japanese, are very worried about Japan's direction at present and the fact that Toyota is so far behind in what's looking to be the future is of huge concern to them. It seems to me that it's a re-run of Japan's previous disastrous backings-of-the-wrong technology: for example, Betamax/Laserdisc/minidisc instead of VHS and their Japan-only phone tech vs GSM. The Japanese call it the Galapagos syndrome. So, if Europe turns all electric, and the EU comes to terms with the Chinese EV manufacturers, who are vastly more cost-competitive than any of the Japanese makers, what exactly will Toyota be selling? Betamax cars?
