Japanese Automakers Halt Production Lines Due To Power Shortages

While Tokyo Electric Power Co. battling a possible meltdown at a nuclear reactor 220km north of Tokyo. To conserve power in Japan, the authority had planned rolling blackouts.

 

 

As results, many manufacturer plants are out of production. However, Japan’s automakers may be able to make up for lost output by using excess production capacity at unaffected plants and running assembly lines on overtime and during holidays.

 

Below are the summary reported by Japanese Automakers.

 

Nissan

 

Nissan, Japan’s second-largest carmaker, suspended operations at four plants until tomorrow and at two other plants until March 18, the Yokohama-based company said yesterday in a statement.

The automaker earlier said 2,300 new vehicles were damaged by tsunami surges in the wake of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in Japan. Nissan doesn’t have an estimate of how much production may be lost, said Yuichi Nakagawa, a spokesman for the company.

 

Honda

 

Honda, the nation’s third-largest carmaker, will halt output through March 20, reducing production by an estimated 16,600 cars and trucks and 2,000 two-wheelers, Tomoko Takamori, a spokeswoman for the Tokyo-based company, said yesterday.

 

Toyota

 

Toyota Motor Corp. , may lose output of at least 40,000 vehicles after Japan’s strongest earthquake damaged factories and crippled nuclear power plants, causing electricity shortages.

 

Toyota closed 12 plants in the nation through tomorrow, Shiori Hashimoto, a spokeswoman for the company, said by phone yesterday. The manufacturer’s profit will be cut by 6 billion yen ($72 million) for each day of lost operations in Japan, while Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. may each lose 2 billion yen a day, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimated.

 

Not only is the struck region one of our production bases, those directly hit and vastly affected include our dealers, suppliers and numerous other partners, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said in a statement on the Toyota City, Japan-based company’s website.

 

Daihatsu

 

Daihatsu Motor Co., 51 percent owned by Toyota, may lose production of 9,600 units as it closes factories through tomorrow, Fumihiko Kondo, a spokesman for the Osaka-based carmaker, said yesterday.

 

Mitsubishi

 

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. planned to resume production at its three Japan factories tomorrow after a two-day halt, Kai Inada, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based carmaker, said today.

 

We don’t know how many cars we are going to lose from the stoppage, said Yuki Murata, a company spokesman. Domestic production totalled 660,104 vehicles in 2010, he said.

 

Mazda

 

Mazda Motor Corp. will extend a production halt at four Japan plants until at least tomorrow night due to a parts shortage, Ken Haruki, a spokesman for the Hiroshima-based carmaker, said by phone yesterday. The company isn’t disclosing how much output it will lose, he said.

 

Hino

 

Hino Motors Ltd. said it planned a stoppage until at least tomorrow, and Hiromichi Suwa, a spokesman, said the company was trying to calculate the potential loss.

 

Isuzu

 

Isuzu Motors Ltd. said it would stop output at its two Japan plants until March 18.