Raw Japan

Tokyo’s shrinking motor show

Before the Tokyo Motor Show kicked off this week, I wrote about how subdued the biennial event was likely to be this year, in the absence of any foreign automakers or even domestic truck makers.

But I’m not sure I was quite prepared for what I witnessed here on the second day of the media preview days.

Sitting here in the press centre where there are nearly 200 work spaces set up, you could almost hear a pin drop. Most of the seats are empty, and there’s only the low hum of hard drive motors escaping from the laptops of the few of us left here.

As a car industry reporter, I’ve been to dozens of motor shows on three continents over the past seven years. At the media centres, it’s usually a mad rush to grab a spot or a LAN cable connection; and there’s no guarantee someone wouldn’t pull the cord anyway, if you leave your PC unattended for more than half an hour.

Down on the show floor, the mood was similar, if not worse.

Despite spanning just half of the floor space as the last Tokyo Motor Show two years ago, the first thing you noticed was how much the organisers must have tried — rather unsuccessfully — to fill the gaping holes left on the red carpet by the would-be exhibitors that pulled out over the preceding months.

This, despite the fact that Nissan Motor and Mitsubishi Motors, for example, share the east wing of the convention hall with Takara Tomy, a toymaker known for its miniature car models. Or a stretch of panels displaying children’s drawings of futuristic cars.

Carmaker to reporters: “Sorry, no water; we’re cutting costs”

If only Extreme Cost-Cutting were a sport.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors today joined a growing string of automakers pulling out of cash-draining motorsports activities with an exit from the Dakar Rally. It’s part of the company’s attempt to squeeze out any cost savings it can, and it seems no effort is too small for consideration.

At today’s news conference to announce third-quarter financial results, the master of ceremonies opened with the following remark: “You may have noticed there are no refreshments at your seats today. This is part of our effort to reduce spending.”

Sound silly? Mitsubishi Motors is certainly not alone.

Japanese manufacturers are known for their fanatical cost-cutting ways – low ceilings to reduce air-conditioning bills, turning off the lights during lunch hours and double-sided printing with two pages to a side, to name just a few. These endeavours reach extremes when times are tough, and the anecdotes are endless.

I almost fell off my chair once when an employee at one automaker told me that back in the loss-making days of the 90’s, office workers had access to only two or three lead refills at a time for their mechanical pencils. It was meant to prevent waste. (Not to mention the odd case of internal stationery theft.) Another former worker at the company told me they used to cut erasers in half.

Niche electric car makers challenge majors

Former Subaru rally driver Yoshio Takaoka readily admits his business was a polluter and now wants to make up for his “sins” behind the wheel.

Takaoka is promoting the zero-emission “Girasole Elettrica” in Japan, one of a number of electric cars on display this week at a Tokyo expo. 

Other electric vehicles, mostly small, also grabbed floor space, but none were from industry majors, who want to take electric cars from eco-concepts to the roads in the next few years and previewed some at last year’s G8 Summit in Hokkaido.

Girasole is attracting the most visitor attention, partly because it’s the only one already on sale, as the electric car showroom is still mainly about prototypes.  

The Girasole, which means sunflower in Italian, retails for about $22,000 and drivers can claim a $6,600 environmental subsidy from the Japanese government.

The highway-worthy two-seater reaches speeds of 65 km per hour (41 mph) and can travel up to 120 km on a full battery,  for a plug-in charge of only about $1.