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Comment by pentae | Hacker News Reader

Yep, Mazda were the most vocal about rejecting the touch screen trend, and Honda and Toyota are losing a lot of customers to Mazda who have been producing the best cars in their class in the last several years so it makes sense that they are jumping on the bandwagon.

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Since peaking in 2015 Mazda is not growing. They are steadily losing market share over the last 10 years. They make attractive cars, but they bet on pretending that they are a "premium" brand and priced themselves out.

https://carsalesbase.com/us-mazda/

https://www.autonews.com/sales/mazdas-complicated-journey-pr...

In terms of sales volume in the US, you are correct: Mazda is not selling more cars. If you look at their financial reporting, they're making more money from car sales. Looks like ~60% more.

Anyone with a lick of business sense would happily trade -10% sales volume for +60% profit from higher margins. They didn't price themselves out, they just decided to not play the loss-leader volume game Ford/Honda/Toyota is playing.

Looks like ~60% loss to me. (From $1.1B net in 2015 to $572M net in 2019)

https://money.cnn.com/quote/financials/financials.html?symb=...

EDIT: $1.1B in 2016. In 2015 net income was $1.45B :-(

From what I can tell from the investor docs, the overall loss was from exchange rates and tariffs from losing access to sharing Ford's factories and costs and the high capex to building a replacement factory and generally transitioning to a fully independent automaker.

Every shareholder report in the last couple years stated that their premium offerings are doing better than they expected and they're making more money than they expected given the capex.

JPY/USD rate changed 9% over the last 5 years, are you sure it explains 70% lower net income?

You stated that they make 60% more money. If the point you are trying to make is that they make 60% more than they expected, I won't argue with you.

Mass market automakers usually target ~7% margin, so a 9% change in exchange rate without adjustment in price would make an automaker flip from profitable to unprofitable (observable with Nissan as a real world example). It doesn't decrease their profit by 9%.

Mazda raised their margin target to ~10% per vehicle, which is pretty standard for the premium segment. Which if they performed to expectations, would mean 40% more profit; they're slightly overperforming at ~60%.

Interesting. I from what I have seen of Mazda's price range, even within a model, it's pretty large. You can get a CX-5 base for mid 20s, or the turbocharged, leather-wrapped nav-included tour package for almost 40.

The CX-5 is at the higher end of their starting prices, too. They have the Mazda3, CX-3, CX-30 and Mazda6 that are all cheaper base.

And to be sure, Mazda's crossovers look much better than Honda or Toyota - at least Toyota finally refreshed their interiors two years ago to look like something other than 2003 era.

My Mazda3 has no touchscreen controls and I am very happy with that.

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