I think Japanese automakers by sticking to ICE vehicles have admitted defeat - that they no longer have the engineering prowess to compete.

they dominated in the era of small engines.

with EVs - the Chinese have run away with the stick & sadly no one is catching up.

I wish the Japanese made good EVs - Germans are the only ones besides the Chinese making decent EVs

▲

koshergweilo 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Korea makes pretty good EVs as well

▲

ActorNightly 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Not a single manufacturer out there makes a "good" ev.

All have proprietary bullshit parts, proprietary fancy software with features that nobody gives a fuck about, and are all expensive. Im not paying fucking 30k for a Nissan leaf. EVs are supposed to be simple. Where is my 12k OTD Corolla with a battery and a motor instead of an engine?

Meanwhile BYD has an app that auto parallel parks. And China has cars like Greely M9 that are not only packed full of features, but also has a gas engine that acts like a generator.

	▲	top_sigrid 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And BYD doesn't have propietary software? Also this leaves out Kia and Hyundai, the latter which I would argue has some of the best EVs and in Europe with the Inster also one of the most affordable ones without it being stripped down completely.

▲

jesterson 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> they no longer have the engineering prowess to compete

That's not nearly the case. They have made one of best EVs back in years, but decided to focus on hybrids. And that makes total sense.

▲

mayama 9 hours ago | parent [-]

To compete in EV, one has to compete also in battery manufacturing. Increasingly Japan is unable to keep up with China and even Korean manufacturers. Panasonic is still in the race due to their decades lead, but its market is largely shrinking. Once China took over batteries, it would have been unlikely for Japan to take the EV market, just like Sony. Same with most American EV manufacturers who are unable to compete, even with closed off large American auto market, that Japan has no access to. As rapidly shrinking Tesla marketshare world wide suggests, competing with Chinese makers is hard.

	▲	ehnto 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They can purchase the battery technology, just as many manufacturers already do. I hate to be a luddite, but they also don't need to be pioneers to succeed here. They need cars that meet their customers needs, just like not every ICE car needs to have an F1 racing engine in it.

▲

underlipton 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It may not necessarily be the catastrophic move it seems to be, on reflection. 2030s Japan will not be 1970s Japan. Their labor force is different, the culture is different, the world is different. It might be better to not waste time and money chasing the, "We USED to make amazing cars," phantom, and instead push forward into whatever comes next.