Vehicle for the next generation: Electric Car

In Japan, with the government’s support, Toyota and Honda are fiercely competing for the sales of their hybrid cars (HV). Also the competition in the development and sales of the new generation eco-cars is getting intense, too. On the 5th of this month, Mitsubishi launched an electric vehicle (EV) called “i-MiEV”. As the world first mass production of EVs, Mitsubishi joined in the next generation eco-car market where the mainstream is hybrid cars such as Toyota’s Prius. Also, from next year, Fuji Heavy Industries and Nissan Motors are planning to launch their EVs. With the government’s tax cuts on cars and car-replacement subsidies, it seems eco-cars are the area which is going to be the new battle field with the prospect of the expansion of the market.

EV vs HV – they are both under the spotlight at the moment as the new generation eco-cars. EVs only use electricity with no CO2 emission, so they are the “ultimate” eco-cars and HVs use both electricity and gasoline, so they are more like “practical” eco-cars.

As well as non-emission, EVs are cheap to run. If charged using low-rate midnight power, it only going to cost JPY 1 per km, which is 1/3 of the Prius’ mileage which Toyota boasts as the world’s highest standard.

However, there are some issues for public use. First of all, the EV “i-MiEV” Mitsubishi launched on the 5th , has the similar specs as mini-cars, costs over JPY 3 million even with the government subsidy; and customers would have to think twice or three times before purchasing one.

Secondly, although with the latest lithium-ion batteries, the cars can only go for 160km without re-charging, there are not enough high-speed charging stands, only 39 even in the Tokyo metropolitan district: so it is inconvenient for a long drive yet.

On the other hand, HVs are not as eco-friendly as EVs, they are more practical. Thanks to the war between Honda’s “Incite” and Toyota’s “Prius”, they are around JPY 2 million and are at a similar level as petrol cars. The cars use electricity but they are still petrol cars, so drivers do not have to worry about running out of gas or worrying about a special station for recharge.

Also, Toyota is going to offer a lease option for “Plug-in hybrid cars” at the end of the year. These cars are the advanced HV model which is a lot closer to EVs in its environmental performance. If it is a short distance drive, they can go just with electricity – no CO2 emission, and when it runs out, they can run with petrol.

Osamu Mashiko, the president of Mitsubishi Motors said that “Electric cars would be the ultimate eco-cars that will play a major role for the ‘next 100 years’” when he was at the launching ceremony of “i-MiEV”, he made an appeal of a promising future for EVs. Mitsubishi Motors started the development of EVs in the 1960s and kept it going through a deep slump in their business between 2004 and 2005. While Toyota and Honda were launching their HVs one after another, they kept investing into their EVs to start its mass production before anyone else.

Carlos Ghosn of Nissan Motors also thinks that EVs will be the main vehicles in the next generation market and Nissan is going to start selling their EVs in 2010. They set their first year production at 50,000 (Mitsubishi had set theirs as 2000). He says that Nissan’s EVs would be the leading brand among non-emission “Zero- emission” cars with all governmental help inside and outside the country.

Honda and Toyota still think “the main eco-car market will still be HVs for a while”. Toyota is selling their new Prius, launched on 18 May and Honda is trying to expand their sales of the Incite, launched in February. In the new car sales (exclude mini-cars) in May, Prius came first and Incite came third: the cars are definitely the main bread-winners for the companies.

However, both Toyota and Honda, unable to ignore the raising of environmental awareness, say “With long term foresight, it is important to aim for Zero emissions” (one of Honda’s top officials). That is why Toyota is now preparing the launch of the advanced HV “Plug-in hybrid”. We cannot keep our eyes off HVs and EVs and I would like to keep posting articles about these eco cars.


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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

Latest situation of Japanese Kon-katsu

At the moment in Japan, we lately see the word “Kon-katsu” everywhere on TV, magazines, etc. Like “Shu-katsu”, shortened from “Shushoku katsudo”, preparation activities for job hunting; “Kon-katsu”, shortened from “Kekkon katsudo”, means preparation activities for getting married.

In this country, despite their sexes, there are many young males and females who cannot make a life-time commitment even if they want to and now is said to be the time young people need to do some “Kon-katsu” if they want to get married. Why can’t they get married? Whether lucky or not (?), I am married and to be honest, I could not think of any reasons, so I checked this issue out a little bit.

Young males’ views are:
・Even men can cook easily using all the convenient electric cooking appliances
・We do not have to worry about their meals because there are many convenience stores and restaurants open 24 hours a day
・We are not earning enough to support another person or family
・We are living free at the moment and do not want to be restricted
・We hate children, etc.

On the other hand, females’ views are:
・We hate housework
・We do not give up working or being restricted
・We do not want to have babies or raise them
・We do not want to look after our husband’s parents
・We will not be able to have our own time, etc.

For the last 10 to 20 years, it is surely getting much closer to the “you-can-live-on-your-own” environment. It was tradition in this country that females stayed at home doing housework and males went outside working hard. But now, if you have money you can buy freshly cooked meals 24 hours a day and they are reasonably cheap. Also because of the result of having nuclear families, numbers of young people do not have much experience of living with older generations and have not tasted much home cooking or have not learned how to make them either.

Another reason could be the slow economy. Less opportunities to work as a permanent full-timer and people cannot expect secure income because of the risk of redundancy or bankruptcy. They cannot foresee their future pensions. In a situation like this, if they both work they may make just enough money to live, but thinking about getting married and having children, looking after their aging parents and their own future when they get old, they tend to delay the decision on their marriage.

In these troubled times, the generation who enjoyed their lives and worked hard in their 20s and early 30s, all of a sudden realise that it would be lonely living like that and seriously start thinking about looking for someone to spend time with and start “Kon-katsu”. For males and females with a career, because now it is not easy to get married, they need to do “Kon-katsu” to actively but carefully look for a partner by registering at marriage agencies and going to parties, etc.

Especially, females are more positive about “Kon-katsu”. In the background, there is not much of the old sense of value such as “arranged marriage is only for young people” and “we have choose between work or marriage”; females seem to have found a new sense of value in “we can get both: marriage and work”. Also females have a certain age limit to have babies, so they start thinking about marriage more intensely than males.

Women seem to have a clear vision toward marriage and what they want from it and by the time they want to get married, which is normally between 30s and 40s, so many of them get married at rather a ripe age. This generation is called “baby boomer juniors” and many of them are single. So some baby boomer parents who worry about their sons and daughters sometimes do “Kon-katsu” for their old children. Whatever is happening, it seems the times are changing and it is getting easier for females to talk about marriage openly. What is it like in your country?



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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

How Japanese choose cars?

Because this blog is in English, I do not think many Japanese read it: I will tell you what Japanese people, who have bought cars from JPC, check when they choose cars.

Generally, when Japanese people decide to buy a car from us, they contact us after checking all the pros & cons on the internet or from car magazines, or actually having test driven the car. Basically, we at JPC do not have stock and buy cars at auction on their behalf according to the order. After considering everything, they decide that buying a car at auction is the best way and they choose us because they can trust us and our service. However, as I said, we do not have stock, this is the process our customers take after checking all the information and they decide on the type or model of car themselves.

From here is the main part of today’s issue. When people decide to actually purchase the car, the reasons for their final decision differ by their age.

Firstly, young single males: Mostly, their main purpose of buying a car is to take girls out. So they choose sport cars, SUV and mini-vans which are suitable for special day-outs with a girl. They buy them impulsively and almost 80% use car loans.

Next a couple with children (having them or already had them): husbands usually choose a car and the wives just follow. Most of them choose family-friendly cars such as SUV, wagons and mini-vans. The main point is enough luggage space they need because of having children. However, young couples are not that wealthy, they do not buy expensive cars. They do not care so much how the car looks and decide based on its practicality. They have a sound financial plan, so not many use car loans.

Then, by the time children start at kindergarten, some of the couples with children who had bought their cars conservatively decide to buy new ones. They sometimes want to buy imports. At kindergarten, they all go home at the same time, so there is a chance of checking each other out. “A’s parents have an expensive foreign car”, one of the parents might start a conversation, then it is usually the wife who would ask her husband if they can buy a new car. They just want to out-do each other, the world of showing-off but when even a wife who does not care about cars sees someone else driving a Mercedes Benz, she thinks that the other mum must be rich; and of course the mum who is in the car want others to think about her like that. Women who take their babies to day care centre do not care about cars so much because their home time is different. Data suggests that in the Setagaya Ward, where the richest people in Japan reside, the largest numbers of people own Mercedes Benz per family in the world. (In fact, we have sold a lot of expensive imports to people in the ward. We are lucky to have an area like this to make money but people like myself think it must be hard to live there … Is it just my jaundiced view? )

When the numbers of children in a household increase from 1 or 2 to 3, most people buy 7-8 seater mini-vans. Most people think about someone else other than their family, such as their parents to travel all together in a car. The features people want for these cars are sliding doors and navigation systems. Sliding doors are indispensable for mums with young children when their hands are full and a navigation system is a must-have item for weekend drives. Another popular feature is a sun roof. For children before school age, who have too much curiosity, it is fun to stick their heads through the sun roof, and although this is extremely dangerous, we cannot win against their smiles, can we? When we have this sort of family structure, a mini-van is not just for convenience but they want to value the time they spend together.

When people are single, cars are just a way of self-expression, then once we have wives and children, the cars become an important communication tool with our family and friends. Also young shy girls turn into tough “Mamas” who will take charge in choosing cars one day.

This is the pattern we see in Japanese people we have dealt with when it comes to car purchases. What is it like in your country?



★ Japanese used car stock : http://jpctrade.com/stock/index.html
★ JPCTRADE Home page : http://jpctrade.com/
★ JPCTRADE Blog : http://jpctrade.blogspot.com/

(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

Future relationship between New Zealand and Japan

I am going to talk something serious today: about one of our main trade partners, New Zealand.

For a long time, New Zealand has been importing millions of used cars from Japan but the number has dramatically decreased since last year. When the Labour Party led by ex-Prime Minister Helen Clark was in power, they have never really set harsh environmental restrictions on car imports. However, because of the pressure from civic groups, from the year 2008, only when cars meet the strict emission standard set out after the year 2004 can be imported. As a result, in the year 2008, only 97,357 cars were exported to New Zealand, which was 71.4% less than the previous year.

Checking the situation more carefully, of course, this is the main reason but there was more to it: because of sluggish credit business, US credit companies pulled out of New Zealand and now people in New Zealand cannot get low rate car loans. The high yen and rise in car prices also played a great part. For these reasons, it is expected that 2009 used car sales will drop by more than 60% compared to the year before.

Although the relationship between New Zealand and Japan is not bad (at least I believe so), it does not seem to be improving. The image Japanese have of new Zealand are mostly favourable and positive: a country with natural beauty, a peaceful and rich agricultural country, Maori culture, its people friendly toward Japan, a country they want to visit one day, etc. On the other hand, people in New Zealand similarly think of Japan favourably and positively: a country of modern technology, a country with a mixed culture of old and modern, hardworking people, etc.

However, looking from New Zealand side, Japan is the 4th main trade partner, already losing the lead to China a long time ago and the numbers of visitors to Japan are getting less and less.

Behind this issue, is the existence of the newly developing countries such as China, Korea and Singapore. Currently, we have an issue of an agreement between New Zealand and Japan. In April this year, New Zealand signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with China and is now talking about the similar thing with Korea. If Japan does not have some formally written agreement with New Zealand, we can keep the door open for importing from New Zealand to Japan, but when we export to New Zealand, there might be some disadvantageous conditions. So even if the economy turned around and improved, Japanese car sales may not recover. If people can get Chinese and Korean cars cheaper than Japanese cars because of the tax agreement, people who do not mind these cars might buy them instead of buying Japanese imports with high custom duties.

So I am hoping these top people, thinking about long-term effects, sit down and talk carefully about the benefit for the both countries.


★ Japanese used car stock : http://jpctrade.com/stock/index.html
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★ JPCTRADE Blog : http://jpctrade.blogspot.com/

(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

New Prius is now on the market!!!

Toyota started selling the third generation “Prius” at last. They improved combustion performance greatly but set the price at JPY2.05 million, JPY280,000 cheaper than the cheapest of the existing models. (To compete against Honda’s hybrid car “Incite” launched in February and to put priority in expanding the sales of the Prius, the company’s president Mr Toyoda, the voice of authority, decided to drop the price from originally around JPY2.4 million.) In 2009, it is expected that 1 in every 5 cars they produce in Japan would be the Prius and the car would be the new main force for the company like “Corolla”.

Toyota released the first Prius in 1997, the second generation model in 2003 and kept recording a surplus for a long time. For this third generation model, by cutting the production cost by 30%, they are betting the fate of the company on this car as the moneymaking vehicle.

The combustion performance is 38km per litre, which is the world best within mass-produced cars and the aerodynamic volume displacement is raised to 1.8 litre, but the prices are kept down to between JPY2.05 million and JPY3.27 million. In Japan, as a part of the government’s economic-stimulus package, hybrid cars owners can receive tax credits and if they want to purchase an hybrid car from a car used for 13 years and more from the first registration, they can get even bigger tax credits, in total up to JPY470,000.

Toyota has set the monthly domestic sales target as 10,000 cars but already has 80,000 orders, so it will be 5 months wait even if you put an order now. Honda’s “Incite”, launched in February, is also popular and about 2 months’ wait. Now car manufacturers in Japan are facing up to the new era that these environmentally-friendly vehicles will lead the production and sales of the companies.

Toyota is planning for sales of the Prius in 80 different areas in many countries, which is double the current area and plans to sell 30 to 40 million of them overseas in 2009. They want to put the “Hybrid Vehicle = Prius” image worldwide. Total production of the Prius will reach 50 to 60 million in 2009. Because Toyota’s total domestic production plan is around 270 million vehicles, the Prius would account for almost 20%; which would also be the largest in the country as a single vehicle.

While selling the third generation Prius, Toyota has also kept selling the second generation model at the same time. This is unusual keeping an old model on the market when car manufacturers launch a new model as a strategy. They are going to sell them to corporate customers after some improvement such as simplifying equipment, etc. Toyota has set the price of the cheapest model as JPY1.89 million, exactly the same price as the Incite. They are going to compete head-on against Honda. By the way, I read an article the other day that UK Toyota delivered 50 of the second generation Prius to the British army. Even the army cannot ignore the environmental rules and they have to reduce CO2 emission per car to 130g/km and under by 2011. They chose the second generation Prius because their CO2 emission is 104g/km, one of the best in the cars in the European market.

The domestic and international automotive markets are both experiencing sluggish sales because of the slow economy and personal spending after last year’s financial crisis but here is a hope: this new Prius might expand the world hybrid vehicle market!


★ Japanese used car stock : http://jpctrade.com/stock/index.html
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★ JPCTRADE Blog : http://jpctrade.blogspot.com/

(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

Too many trucks

In Japan, if you have 5 vehicles and clear certain conditions, you can start a transport business. Before the change in the regulation, a person who wants to start a transport business had to purchase the vehicles or had to show the sales contracts with car dealers, so he/she needed a reasonable amount of personal funds. But now, permits are issued even if they have their vehicles under lease agreements and there are more transport companies (mainly small to medium size companies who do not have much capital) with borrowed vehicles than companies who own all their vehicles.

However, these leased vehicles, which used to be convenient and beneficial tax wise, are now pressuring and affecting transport companies financially together with their downturn in sales and lack of their personal funds because of this dwindling economy.

A marine container transport company business owner said, “We cannot afford to pay the lease after our sales have been reduced by 30 – 40% compared to last year”. So people like him sell trucks with not much lease on to the dealers and cancel the contract for survival. Another transport company owner said, “Out of 20 trucks we have, half of them are leased. Our sales went down and the number of our trucks’ operating days is now 15 days/month average. We may not be able to pay the lease”. Usually, what lease companies do is that, if someone cannot pay the lease for more than 2 months, the case will be payment default and they organise to take the trucks back. Then, because it means the transport company is going to lose trust and credibility and this will cause trouble for the company when they want to borrow money from other finance institutions, it will lead to an even bigger loss for the company.

A truck dealer said, “We have people ringing us every day and asking if we can buy their leased trucks. The trucks are usually later model, new ones. If they have more than 80% of the lease left, if we buy them we will make a big loss; so we normally turn those ones down.”

Even at the dealers who buy these trucks, they have hundreds of trucks and trailers in their yard, mostly taken for a reason such as lease payments in arrears or transport companies’ bankruptcy, and waiting for an opportunity to be sold again.

Because of this slow economy, transport companies are not buying new trucks in a hurry and dealers have too much stock they cannot get rid of. It is unlikely this is going to change in the near future, either.

So if you are after a truck from Japan, now is the time!


★ Japanese used car stock : http://jpctrade.com/stock/index.html
★ JPCTRADE Home page : http://jpctrade.com/
★ JPCTRADE Blog : http://jpctrade.blogspot.com/

(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955

New web site: Carwebby.com

Hello, everyone. There is not much of good news lately but we, at JPC have great news to tell you! We finally created a new website.

We value our website a lot as the contact point with our customers and have a person working everyday especially for its development and everyday maintenance. Until now, our website was for the car trade through auctions. To make it easier for our customers to choose a car to buy from us out of wider selection, we developed a new website called “Carwebby.com” where customers can buy a car from our huge stock.

We are planning to add even more functions to the website and it is only in the first stages but we already have 3000～4000 cars listed. Among those, there are some cheap cars we bought directly from the previous owners and they are around US$1000. You might find a bargain there. We update the data almost everyday and upload new cars we have just bought yesterday would be on the website today. However, you have to be quick to pick up cheap ones because dismantlers are always after them or they might be sold at auction, so please check it everyday. For some cars, you can even negotiate prices on the website, so don’t hesitate. We are waiting for your bid.

Actually, to be honest, we have spent more than 2 years developing this website since we first thought about it and this is our dream come true. We, at JPC, develop our own websites. As you might already know, it is not easy to develop a website: it involves careful thought over the structure of the sites, page transition, if it matches to our current business situation, development of programme, setting up a server, etc. And they are not cheap. But there is not many websites you do not need updating apart from some on goods and company information and most programmed websites need constant improvement considering the customers usage.

Everyday, thousands of new websites are created in the world and thousands of them are disappearing. We want to make our new website as useful as our current one. We promise you that we keep working on it to make our customers want to keep using it. We are not an internet venture. Our aim is to provide a situation where customers can buy a car safely through the internet, so our website has to be convenient to make customers want to use our service again. For this, we will have to improve it constantly. “Improving” is an important part of our business model. If you have any suggestions, such as types of cars you would like to see, information you would like on the website, functions you want on it, please tell us. We value your honest opinions. Keep watching Carwebby.com!


★ Japanese used car stock : http://jpctrade.com/stock/index.html
★ JPCTRADE Home page : http://jpctrade.com/
★ JPCTRADE Blog : http://jpctrade.blogspot.com/

(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
3B YS-Building, 1-2-2 Botan, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955