Will foreign car brands move in while domestic producers squabble with the bureaucrats?

"I get the impression drivers have become aware of the contradiction that, even if car performance improves, unless speed regulations on the highways are lifted, it will hardly make any difference,"

What does that even mean?

Keep building for the past and the future will replace you.

What does that even mean?

It means if you buy a Lamborghini in Japan, you'll never get out of 2nd gear, even on the expressway.

It means if you buy a Lamborghini in Japan, you'll never get out of 2nd gear, even on the expressway.

Amazingly, despite this, Japan is the second biggest market after US for Lamborghini. Probably because the speed limit is rarely enforced - and “image” trumps everything else here. A big fat luxury tax on these unnecessary things, until driverless cars finish them off, would be wonderful.

Actually enforcement of speed restrictions is very region specific.

My car's speedo is rated to 180km/h. I would like to drive on the highway(read as the most expensive tollways in the world) comfortably around 110 ~ 120km/h. But in my prefecture the limit on all highways is 80km/h. By driving in perfect dry conditions on a divided 4 lane highway @ for example 115km/h, will see me 35km/h over the limit which will attract a nasty fine and be penalized points.  And the police here do set up radar traps - thankfully not every day.

So having a hi-tech car with tons of built in safety factors and devices means nothing. If I follow the law of the road and travel say 300kms - as I often do - I'll be on the road for another hour increasing exposure to trouble.

This is just a minor example of problems with the industry and regulations here. These bureaucrats just don't get it.

There is no doubt that auto manufacturing will move a significant part of it's capacity off shore in the next decade(s).

I guess the galapagos world of kei cars and a very aged society will be happy.

Japan has become a post-automobile society, where the people aged 18~35 make only $30K a year and can't afford automobiles. Historically men bought fancy cars to impress women on a date, but Japan has also moved past dating scenes with so many herbivore men uninterested in women.

So injection of foreign car brands into Japanese market won't change anything, because Japan is a dying automobile market. 

@PerformingMonkey

What does that even mean?

The speed limit in Japan is 100 km/hr for regular cars and 80 km/hr for Kei cars. That's 62 mph to you, and Japanese drivers do abide by this speed limit, whereas in the US it is actually dangerous to go by the speed limit because everybody else is blowing past you 20 mph above.

Re: Browny's point, between Nagano and Tokyo, the Kan'etsu and Nagano expressways have a speed limit of 100 but the Chuo is 80km. The Nagano expressway, especially the bit around Karuizawa which is quite steep and has lots of curves, some with tunnels, is far more dangerous than the Chuo.

Personally, I don't think highway speeds are the problem. The problem is low wages for young people and the complete distortion of the domestic car market thanks to how cars are taxed. As the article states, nearly half the cars sold in Japan are kei cars. This is entirely tax driven. With 660cc, car designers have to choose, poor performance or fitting a turbo and killing fuel economy. You can't have both. Higher up the scale, you have top selling people carriers like the Voxy and Step Wagon that carry eight with a 1996cc engine, specifically designed to reduce the car tax below the 2000cc limit. Toyota and Honda do not sell such underpowered vans overseas, because they don't get a tax benefit. Having an undersized engine rev lots is not good design.

If the cars people are buying are compromised to benefit from bureaucratic tax rules, it should be no surprise that people do not find cars interesting or enjoyable. The way to create demand for things is to make them fun. Look at the backlash at Apple for compromising performance of their old phones to save battery life.

Japan stands to lose a lot, and yet the parties involved keep fiddling while Rome burns."

This is a very accurate assessment of Japan on EVERYTHING from the car industry to the population decline.

kohaku - agree. The tax defined classifications of cars is not based on real life situations or on simple science at the best.

Small engine = eco. A classic bureaucrats analysis. So devoid of examining a plethora of parameters.  As you stated - the people movers vans made in Japan are sold overseas with larger capacity engines. Why? Those people want to Waste more fuel? or Drive very fast? or Have more accidents? No!  A 2.4l engine can have many superior aspects over a 1.9l, but it's classified as bigger so you get taxed accordingly. I drove a 2.8l car here for 8 years and the tax, shakken difference was substantial. Many people thought my car had a big engine. 2.8l Big? Hardly. 

And the whole kei car industry is based on protectionism. Most other leading manufacturers around the world don't produce 600cc tin cans (as they know the safety and performance limitations would prevent them from passing compliancy tests) so Japanese manufacturers have a literally closed market for 50% of it's market. Clever eh! So they won't be willing to give up that little golden egg anytime soon.

And electric is coming which will throw the whole system into despair. For starters electric cars are vastly simple(r), CCs don't count and less polluting, which will make many bureaucrats snap more than a few pencils.

And of course the makers hallowed network of parts producers will crumble as a new order comes into play.

Observing the govt over the next decade concerning all of this will be very interesting.

And I look forward to driving legally at 120km/h on quality safe highways.

What does that even mean? Japans speed limits havent changed for 50yrs, roads today are far better, cars have ABS more economical engines, much safer in collisions and with the new auto braking tech cars can easily drive 100~110kph safely on many parts of Japans expressways as they do in other countries. Most top speeds on expressways are 80kph being able to drive 25% faster will reduce transit times making driving a vehicle more enjoyable/bearable instead of taking a train or plane.

@Samir Basu: Japanese drivers abide by the speed limit? You’re kidding, right?

@ domtoidi

Japanese drivers abide by the speed limit? You’re kidding, right?

No I am not.

What these articles always look to miss, is that also in an age of globalization, you can't pretend all the world is the same. For example, Japanese territory is completely different from China and the USA territories, that are huge. So, I don't understand how some people think you can apply the same solutions and get the same results in different Countries, despite all the differences in them, also linked to the morphology of the Country. In Japan, kei-cars were so successful for one reason. I can see why Japanese automakers prefer to invest in foreign markets, but Japanese market can't become like the US or Chinese market, simply because both the size of population and territory, are completely different. You can't pretend some differences don't exist. Globalization makes sense only to some extent. The same thing can be said about politics. Western values can be "exported" and work only in some societies, they aren't universally accepted. But a society can work also with other models. China found her own model. Singapore? Same. Saudi Arabia? Idem. As a western person you can dislike those models as much as you want, but those societies found their own way. It's useless to think that everything can be the same everywhere. It's not like that, also in a globalization age.

There are several reasons why Americans drive as much as they do. Let me illustrate.

At one time, the Greater Los Angeles area had the largest light rail system in the world, with the most miles and the most ridership of any metropolitan rail transit system anywhere. However, in America, corporations are allowed to determine public policy. Standard Oil (as it was known at that time), Firestone Tire, and General Motors, in the interest of improving their net worth, bought up light rail systems all across the nation, ran them into the ground, and then, claiming they were inefficient and unprofitable, shut them down. A program of building high speed highways, paid for at public expense, was entered upon.

Perhaps most other countries do not have a similar system of highways such as is in the US, but is that a bad thing? While country after country is building bullet trains (Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Morocco, Britain, France, Germany, and others), the American oil companies spend many millions of dollars preventing the US from entering the 21st century by bribing politicians.

Japanese automotive industry can only survive if it focuses on innovations: electric cars and self-driving vehicles. Currently I see only one manufacturer that is mass producing electric cars - that's Nissan. Hybrids will fade away soon, electric cars will soon replace them completely because they are much simpler, cheaper to run and more reliable. European, Chinese and American corporations are investing billions of dollars into development of new electric vehicles and autonomous driving technologies. Japan still lives in the past, it stopped innovating with the crash of a bubble economy. Where are Japanese electric motorcycles, such as Zero? There's none.