#BertelSchmitt

Nissan closed the year in America with U.S. sales up by 10 percent, but that wasn’t enough to please Ghosn. Said the CEO today in Yokohama:

“China was not our biggest disappointment last year. It was mainly the United States. We were expecting a strong year. It did not happen. We postponed it to 2013.”

Nissan is the largest of all Japanese automakers in China, and therefore has the most to lose. With about a quarter of its global sales in China, Nissan has the highest exposure to the ups and downs of the Middle Kingdom. When Chinese rioted in the streets, overturned Japanese cars and torched their dealerships , Nissan was beaten hard. At one point, sales of Nissan cars were cut in half.

Recently, the situation has improved a bit. Nissan’s April sales in China even booked a slight increase over April 2012. A month and a couple percent do not make a trend. Says Ghosn:

If any carmaker is hoping for an imminent turn-around in Europe, or is telling shareholders (I am looking at you, GM) that better times will be here again real soon now, then Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn has a bucket of ice-cold water for them.

“Europe is going to be bad,” Ghosn predicted today in Yokohama. Ghosn also serves as CEO of Renault, a company that is taking major lumps in a market that has been careening south for five years in a row now. One would assume that a man in his position paints a rosier picture. Instead, Ghosn’s pallet is all gloom.

Ghosn knows what is on the mind of the European customer:

If you wanted to have a ten minute advantage (for placing those jumbo derivatives order into the mainframe of your hedge fund) before Nissan’s annual results for the last fiscal were announced in the newly redecorated meeting room on the 8th floor of their Yokohama headquarters, all you had to do was read the smiling faces of Nissan’s top lieutenants. Executive VP Andy Palmer was all grins.

China’s CAAM released April sales today, and as indicated by GM’s good April showing, results are good. Sales of all automobiles are up 13.38 percent to 1,841,700 in April. Treat other reports with caution, many are the usual confusion of passenger vehicles and all cars. In China, there is a huge difference.

Automortal Sins is an infrequent series about the true sins in the auto business. It won’t be the sins which some bloggers regard huge. Building the wrong car once in a while is a minor iniquity compared to the huge, most egregious, and definitely mortal sins committed by automakers, without the smallest amount of remorse.

Creating a new car brand is not a sin often committed anymore in the industry. People learn. Outsiders, from Fisker to Coda and Tesla however are still found munching from the forbidden tree. Some already roast in hell for their sins, others will. Creating a new car brand is one of the most mortal sins in the business. You probably won’t believe me, but I will bring a prominent witness.

According to current information on Distraction.gov, “in 2011, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver.” There is an all-out war against distraction of drivers, especially against cellphones. At the same time, current information at the NHTSA says that “In 2010, 4,280 pedestrians were killed and an estimated 70,000 were injured in traffic crashes in the United States.” Will walking be outlawed? We better stay at home then. Which can be even deadlier: Every year, 18,000 Americans die from accidental injuries that take place in the house, making our homes the second-most deadly place to be. The deadliest place is still the car. 32,367 died in a car in 2011, says the NHTSA.

Compared to walking or staying at home, especially compared to simply being in a car, distracted driving appears to be life-extending. At least when looking at the raw numbers. No wonder that the anti-cellphone movement is getting nervous, and is looking for more dead to bolster their case.

Toyota’s CEO Akio Toyoda threw another bucket of cold water on wild fantasies of autonomous cars. Instead of developing cars that drive themselves, Toyota is thinking more of cars that assist you in driving.

Found around the corner from Toyota

It’s not quite the all clear, but Japanese automakers (and their government-owned Chinese joint-venture partners) breathe a bit easier after receiving April sales numbers for China. Numbers had been down severely after last September’s anti-Japan riots. Latest “figures suggest that the firms are closer to recovering their lost sales,” says The Nikkei [sub].

By now, most of you who care about these things are aware that Toyota today announced an annual net profit of $9.73 billion for the fiscal that ended on March 31, more than three times of what the company made in the year before. By now you probably heard that the “weaker yen” is the reason. Not really, says Toyota, claiming that “effects of FOREX rates” added only $1.5 billion to the bottom line. There is another number you may not have heard.

Forward contracts on popcorn skyrocketed at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as former T TAC Chief Editor Ed Niedermeyer drew massive fire for his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. On Sunday, GM’s PR Chief Selim Bingo blasted Niedermeyer for “stepping through the looking glass” and for “carelessly comparing GM’s spending in China to that in the U.S.”

A day later, Bob Lutz joined the fray.

Seeing delinquencies and credit losses going up while used car sales and lending standards deteriorate, rating agency Fitch warned today that “U.S. auto lenders will likely report further weakening in asset quality metrics this year.” Translated into English, lenders will become increasingly dependent on sub-prime loans and exposed to their perils.

Last month, GM CEO Dan Akerson said that GM might move production away from South Korea if tensions with North Korea escalate. Korea labor unions were not amused, saying that Akerson was using the crisis as a pretext to gain the upper hand in upcoming labor talks.

Last week in Detroit, Akerson told GM’s South Korean union leader that he won’t pull GM out of South Korea. He also said he is unhappy with the Korean union, and that he will bring up the matter this week with South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye, when the “Iron Lady” will visit the U.S. this week.

Now, the union is fuming.

The UK new car market was up a strong 14.8 percent in April.

UK’s SMMT says that April registrations stood at 163,357 units, and that registrations in the first four months of 2013 grew 8.9 percent to 768,555 units. However, even the SMMT warns not to read too much into this.