Japan reportedly plans to try to convince Tesla to invest in Nissan after the merger with Honda fell through.
Do you think it makes sense?
Shortly after being announced, Nissan and Honda’s planned merger quickly fell apart earlier this month.
The problem appears to be that Nissan expected a merger while Honda was looking for a takeover of its fellow Japanese automaker.
Now, it looks like Nissan has exhausted its potential lifelines in Japan and it is starting to explore potential partners outside of the country.
The Financial Times has revealed that a group has been put together to approach Tesla for a potential investment in Nissan:
A high-level Japanese group that includes a former prime minister has drawn up plans for Elon Musk’s Tesla to invest in the struggling carmaker Nissan, following the collapse of its merger talks with rival Honda.
The group includes Hiro Mizuno, a former Tesla board member, and ex-premier Yoshihide Suga.
FT’s report claims that the group believes Tesla is interested in buying Nissan’s factories in the US:
The group is hopeful Tesla will become a strategic investor since they believe the world’s largest pure electric-vehicle maker is keen to acquire Nissan’s plants in the US, according to the people. The factories would help it boost domestic manufacturing in response to Donald Trump’s tariff threats.
Tesla has greatly slowed down its plans for new car factories over the last few years as sales have gone down and its current factories are not operating at full capacity.
Electrek’s Take
Top comment by Gertrud
Tesla makes false statements about the production capacity of its factories. Correctly calculated, Tesla could produce 3 million cars in its own factories in 2025.
Example Tesla Grünheide: The factory was planned, approved and built for 500,000 cars per year (and should be quickly expanded to 1 million cars). Currently, Tesla gives 375,000 cars per year as production capacity. This could very easily be increased to the originally planned 500,000 cars. But Tesla will have problems selling even 200,000 cars from the factory. The situation is similar in Shanghai. The factory is ready for up to 1.2 million cars a year. Despite all the discounts, the demand is not there. It would also be very easy to increase output in Austin. But Tesla will have problems selling 1.5 million cars this year. Many people just don't like swasticars.
And that's why Tesla needs a lot of things (e.g. a new CEO and a new board) but definitely no additional production capacity from Nissan.
At this time, it’s unclear if this report should be taken seriously. Japan seems to be panicking a bit because it doesn’t want Nissan to fall into the ends of China as Foxconn has shown interest in taking a stake.
Tesla doesn’t need Nissan’s factories and it has made clear that it prefers to build its own than take over existing factory since its takeover of Fremon factory from Toyota and GM, and that was back in 2010.
I am sure Tesla will hear them out since Mizuno is involved, but I doubt this will go much further than that.
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
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