Senior executives at two major Japanese automakers have apologised to shareholders for poor financial results and promised improvements.
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“We expect to face continued hardship in our business environment for the near term, despite signs of recovery in some areas,” outgoing Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe told the annual general meeting on Tuesday, adding that the company would try to achieve deeper cost cuts than planned.
“We are sorry to have worried our shareholders,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
His counterpart at Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, also expressed regret, and said he had not yet seen convincing recovery from the auto industry slump in the United States, Japan and Europe.
“I feel your disappointment,” Ghosn told a shareholder who declared he had “never imagined” that Nissan would pay no year-end dividend.
“We really feel very bad about it. But I can say as soon as we see free cash flow significantly positive and the financial crisis behind us … immediately I can tell you we will pay the dividend,” he said.
According to Reuters, Ghosn, also head of alliance partner Renault, reiterated he would stay on to see Nissan through the current difficult times.
At a board meeting after Toyota’s AGM, Watanabe made way for founding family member Akio Toyoda while, at Honda Motor, chief executive Takeo Fukui was replaced by Takanobu Ito.
Honda’s shareholders’ meeting, not open to the media, yielded no details about its financial results, and at least one shareholder thanked the company for staying in the black unlike its rivals, a spokeswoman told Reuters.
Most shareholder queries directed to Ghosn at the Nissan AGM were about what was in store for next-generation vehicles, for which the automaker and tival Toyota are taking different approaches.
Watanabe today reiterated Toyota’s strategy of placing hybrid technology at the core of its efforts, arguing that pure electric vehicles would require a breakthrough in battery performance that it does not see in the foreseeable future.
Toyota has announced plans to sell pure electric cars by 2012, but sees their application as limited due to the short driving range and high battery prices.
This reflected comments made to just-auto by other company executives in Japan earlier this month.
Nissan, meanwhile, sought to knock down the hybrid hype. “We do not put electric cars and hybrids in the same category,” Ghosn told shareholders.
“Hybrids are fuel-efficient technology. EVs are no fuel. Hybrids are an optimisation of combustion engines. EVs have none. Hybrids reduce emissions by 20 to 30%. EVs have none.”
Ghosn again stressed that Nissan and Renault were the only carmakers with a mass-volume EV strategy to date, and said he was optimistic that they would proliferate with crude oil at a relatively high US$67 a barrel even in a global recession.
Nissan and Renault are due to launch three electric cars each into different model segments by 2012. The first would be unveiled on 2 August at the opening ceremony of its new headquarters in Yokohama, near Tokyo, he said.
Nissan plans to build over 100,000 electric vehicles a year when it starts US production of the zero-emission vehicles at its Smyrna, Tennessee plant in two to three years. A decision on a European site for battery production and electric car assembly will be made soon, Ghosn added.
Toyota, meanwhile, has postponed plans to build the Prius hybrid at a completed but mothballed new plant in Mississippi (that was originally intended to assemble a medium-sized SUV).
“We have a different strategy from other manufacturers when it comes to electric cars,” Ghon told Reuters after the meeting.
“We are the only one working to mass-market EVs and investing for mass marketing – which is a risk, but we think it’s a bet in the right direction,” he said.
