Japan's Honda and Nissan to reportedly begin merger talks | Hacker News Reader

Japan's Honda and Nissan to reportedly begin merger talks

cnbc.com

23 points_JamesA_15 comments

I can only hope if this happens, that Honda calls the shots.

Honda is at its core an engine company, so the likely transition to EV has been a looming problem. I wonder if a carbon neutral synthetic fuel would help keep them in the running (since liquid fuel still has a better energy density than batteries and perform better in extreme temperatures).

I do wish Honda was merging with an EV company. Or maybe a company like Mazda that makes good reliable cars. Nissan has been in dire straights since Renault...

I am concerned that Nissan will destroy the culture of engineering excellence.

i'm ready to buy a 2027 HN GR GTR in NISMO trim.

For antitrust reasons, I do not see this as actually happening.

Japan sees these things very differently. If anything, the only reason something like this would happen is because behind the scenes Japanese administrators are orchestrating a shotgun wedding.

Multinational antitrust is the issue here. I probably see this as also requiring antitrust approval outside of Japan and there is no way foreign regulators will allow that.

That seems like a pretty wild stretch - I don't know if that has ever been enforced in the car industry, especially for import brands.

And it's not like we are talking about two dominant brands. Nissan is flirting with complete bankruptcy in the next year. It's unclear what US regulators would latch onto here as part of an anti-trust case.

>I don't know if that has ever been enforced in the car industry, especially for import brands.

An example involving Stellantis in Turkey: https://moparinsiders.com/stellantis-turkish-unit-sale-faces...

>It's unclear what US regulators would latch onto here as part of an anti-trust case.

You still have the EU.

Isn't Nissan close to going bankrupt? Would that not make things different/easier?

Many car manufacturers are state-supported, I don’t think they play by the same rules as other businesses.

What is your purposed mechanism/leagally authorative/enforcing body to stop two multinational corporations from incorporating in any one of their markets?

Even if they where headquarterd in US and strictly trading on US market, corporations have rights akin to human beings.

Con-agra, unliver, comcast. All these merged in the US just fine under a very stringent FTC. How could they possibly prevent a foreign multinational corp from doing the same?

They’d be forced to divest from some of their US subsidiaries, so one of the brands would become an independent car company with brand and technology licensing agreements but independent management and shareholders.

For example when InBev merged with Anheuser-Busch they had to sell Labbat’s USA operations to FIFCO USA with geographic exclusive rights to their brands to get the deal through the US DoJ. EU regulators forced Dow and DuPont to divest of much of their crop protection stuff in Europe to complete the US merger.

Why? There’s quite a lot of automakers and neither of these two are in dominant positions, one is even flirting with bankruptcy.

Disagree. I think they feel that the new leadership in the US will let them play ball.

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