Japan's New Car Sales: Updated April 28, 2024.

 

Japan's new car sales log 1st drop in 17 months on Daihatsu scandal

Article Source:  https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240201/p2g/00m/0bu/059000c

Ideas:

Unfortunately, as companies race to be number one, some might begin to cut corners and not focus on quality or safety as much as they used to do.

You can't blame an entire company, or can you, as individual workers take orders from above to improve sales and increase production and maybe safety and quality control take a back seat to the quarterly production or monthly results.

Again, you can't blame an entire industry or can you, such as the Nissan situation a few years ago with Goshn, and what happened there, even though one subsidiary of the Toyota group, Daihatsu had some quality control challenges, can you blame to entire Toyota group or even everyone in Daihatsu, for what might have been a one person or one group within Daihatsu that caused the situation.

Again, unfortunately, shareholders/stockholders focus on every month or every quarterly result, and not focus on the big picture or the long term.

That has become the major challenge for many or most publicly traded companies today, it that they can't make long term plans or goals and have to focus on monthly or quarterly results to keep share-holders happy.

Perhaps someone in Daihatsu became too anxious that the monthly or quarterly numbers were not going to be as good as expected and they started to cut corners on quality control.

There could be a number of reasons for the breakdown in quality control in Daihatsu. But ultimately its still the Toyota group that is responsible for the overall results of all in the Toyota group.

The situation might not even be related to someone's greediness in the Toyota group. as it easily could have been a malfunctioning equipment that affected quality control, and the faulty machinery might not have been noticed of seen until it was too late.

Japan has maybe eight or nine car companies, even though some are subsidiaries of the larger companies likes Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. like the Japanese airline industry has two major airlines with many smaller subsidiaries. 

Each of the Japanese car companies, such as Daihatsu focus on different niches or types of vehicles, as Daihatsu focuses on  min-vehicles.

Its interesting that the Japanese market or Japanese car industry is able to support eight or nine Japanese car companies, and maybe its a sign of cooperation among Japanese companies and not so much cutthroat market competition.

It was good that Daihatsu stopped its production, as it was a good sign that they took the situation seriously, and didn't try to cover-up the situation and or just continued to produce mini-vehicles, to meet production schedules.

Now that the situation has passed, most likely, the focus on Daihatsu, and maybe the Toyota group, and quality control is going to be even more focused.

Just like some years ago, the media focus on Nissan might have been strong as the Goshn situation might have seen the Nissan company being very careful about what it did for a few years.

Most likely it won't take Toyota or Daihatsu to get back to normal and maybe Toyota's global standing and global ranking won't change much in 2023 or even 2024.

Have a nice day and be safe!