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December 28, 2024 - 1:00pm
The UK Government has announced details of the consultation with carmakers over the best route to achieving Net Zero targets. This is a response to job losses in the industry, most notably after the announced closure of Vauxhall’s Luton factory, and ongoing concerns over the feasibility of EV mandates. Manufacturers will have eight weeks to submit their views.
There might appear to be hope in this for those who fear Labour’s policies will herald a “carmaggedon” for the industry. What’s more, the Government press release from Christmas Eve talked of greater “flexibility” and stressed the importance of the automotive sector to the UK economy. But it also referenced some highly dubious figures on the running cost advantages of EVs and made no mention of the broader debate about the Net Zero crusade.
Paying very close attention to all this will be the executives of Japanese car giants Nissan and Honda whose intended merger was confirmed at a press conference in Tokyo this week. Nissan employs 6,000 people in the UK, with a supply chain that extends to 30,000, most of whom are based at the company’s Sunderland plant. Nissan executives have warned that the current regulations are making their business unsustainable: 22% of all sales must be EVs, rising to 28% by 2028.
Labour will need to be careful though: the Nissan-Honda merger could create the world’s third largest car manufacturer, after Volkswagen and Toyota. Mitsubishi, which currently has a partnership with Nissan, could also join and the new corporate behemoth could be worth in excess of $42 billion. The aim is to seal the deal by June 2025 and list on the Tokyo stock exchange in 2026. The essential motive is that both companies are struggling to compete with Chinese dominance of the EV market and the increasingly onerous regulations imposed by Western governments.
Nissan is in a particularly difficult situation, with some calling this a rescue mission by Honda. The company, which reduced its profits forecast massively last month from £2.5 billion to just under £1 billion, has had a fraught decade. In an acutely embarrassing incident in 2018, former CEO Carlos Ghosn escaped from Japan to Lebanon hiding in a large music equipment box on a private jet. Ghosn has described the merger talks as a sign that Nissan is in “panic mode”.
The merger is highly significant in Japan and it is testament to the special status companies like Nissan and Honda that the word “merger” was avoided until it became undeniable. Japan’s mega-corporations are more than just employers: they are proud symbols of the country’s post-war renaissance and serve as almost guardians and protectors of their employees. The deal is simple: once hired you are guaranteed a job for life. In return, you stay with the company and basically devote yourself to it. Japanese salarymen commonly introduce themselves as the virtual possessions of their company (“I am Honda’s Yamato-san”, for example). One’s real family can seem of secondary importance.
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SubscribeIt seems that the UK is trying to de-colonize by turning themselves into the position many of their former colonies were before they arrived.
They seem to be. All in preparation for what though?
Everything will get worse and worse. What do they see there?
Perhaps someone in Unherd could pop round to the sister magazine (it used to be quire special) and ask Gove.
He had high hopes for a new party after destroying the Conservatives. He was going to call it the Phoenix party.
But for what? What is the vision?
The vision is to win the next election
Thats it, they don’t really care about anything else
The Phoenix party LOL if its run by Gove and the usual Tory clowns, how would it be any different
Words fail me . I am starting to look forward to the day when my anger just becomes numbness.
The best political analogy I can think of is the Holodomor
And of course, as the Daily Mail put it Ed Miliband’s father “hated Britain and purveyed a poisonous creed designed to destroy British institutions”.
As Miliband senior himself said about WW” “The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world… you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are.”
Japan restarted their nuclear industry… What a novel idea! What a shame our jobsworth leaders have overseen the slow crumbling of our industry.
I’m sure Labour will come up with some dimwitted compromise, thereby avoiding the immediate loss of 6,000 jobs. Then we will be told how centrist and practical they are. It won’t save the industry of course, which will die a slow death rather than immediately. Maybe they can compensate by raising taxes so high on air flights that no one can afford to fly anymore.
You forgot that they’ll remind us they’re grown-up.
Agree. Jonatham Reynolds is by all accounts starting to pee himself having latterly connected a few dots (despite the unions screaming about Grangemouth for months.as.a foretaste of what.was to.come). Rachel from Customer Service was sent to Sunderland earlier this month,.etc. .
This reminds me of the Trudeau governments decision to ‘invest’ 37 Billion dollars in EV battery plants while also capping oil and gas production. It is as if they want to destroy our economies.
This government will ruin us.
Merely completing, with added malice, what the preceding Conservative governments were already doing.
Not sure this merits an article given deindustrialisation appears to be part of the uniparty’s growth strategy. To try and help.get ahead of a story perhaps you could write about the nudge energy rationing in the UK which is going to become mandatory on current trends in a world that requires 3X power for AI data centres. Or perhaps tackle head on the fraudulent presentation of green data -.that renewables are 44% of energy when in fact it’s 44%.of electrical energy which – in turn – is 55%.of total energy and the implications of this fake news on govt complacence if not hubris (many politicians take the 44% of energy mantra at face value). Or the increasing capture of green subsidies misallocated to corporate entities seeing an investable opportunity on the back of the taxpayer (I’m following this one from a rock in the Irish sea.where big money is buying English land). Or the implications of solar farms on food security. Or the implications of 2030 fossil fuel car ban on freedom of movement relative.to the uptake of other transport modalities and an ageing population. Or perhaps the incoming push for digital ID and money in a world where Florida storms resulted in “cash only” for a week, Crowdstrike can take down the whole system,.and geopolitics will see more deep sea cable cutting. So much to write about lifting a curtain on some urgent and potentially life threatening energy issues
“consultation with carmakers over the best route to achieving Net Zero targets.”
For any sensible govt “Net Zero targets” should actually be “increased employment and industrial production.” But not with TTK’s Labour (as it wasn’t with the fake Tory govt either).
If you love your country Vote Reform whenever you can.
The Japanese may have turned on their nukes but they, like Sth Korea and others, have national govt agencies to negotiate fuel/ energy , leveraging massive spend, to achieve better terms for their people. Unlike most of Europe that abdicates this to multiple transnational corporations for private profit.
Not carmageddon. Starmergeddon.
And in continuation to the last paragraph…”or even give a sh*t.”
Ideology (and virtue signalling..) over reality…
The plan is to reduce the population to travelling by electric bicycle while official electric Zils transport important bureaucratic officials at speed and comfort on almost empty, albeit potholed, highways. The vision of Miliband’s sainted father.
These pampered private schools twits are hellbent on destroying us by every means available to them. For a while I believed they were insulated from the consequences of their demented, reality denying, idiotic fantasies but the more I think about it when the entire country collapses into bankruptcy, poverty and ruin it’ll finally come for them too. I suspect though that no number of deaths of despair and blood spilt will be enough humble them. It has always been so in the history of the Left that their failures are held to be the fault of the ruled not the rulers. Their theories are obviously perfect, it’s those beneath them who failed.
Electric vehicles will reduce dependence on fossil fuels, because the electricity will be generated by offshore wind turbines, which use diesel generators.