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danielgr
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As I posted on my long-standing thread on Honda NA production woes during 2011 (link), Thai floods sure made their mark in November, making up for the first inventory-burning production deficit since JP tsunami recovered started.
That said, the tsunami days are way behind now and production is said to have recovered full output on Dec1st. Honda expects to recover normal inventory levels by the end of March, 2012 sales to end up ~20% on 2011 (link).
Production
- Apr : 53,624 (-52%) ; source Honda
- May : 59,741 (-44%) ; source Honda
- Jun : 62,900 (-38%) ; source Honda
- Jul : 49,323 (-51.6%) ; source Honda
- Aug: 109,397 (-5%) ; source Honda
- Sep: 119,425 (+8.5%) ; source Honda
- Oct: 125,331 (+12.9%); source Honda
- Nov: 84,812 (-21.9%) ; source Honda
For reference, JP exports to NA:
- Feb : 17,959 (+39.2%)
- Mar : 15,106 (-1.0%)
- Apr : 4,544 (-73.1%)
- May : 6,331 (-59.0%)
- Jun : 7,583 (-65.6%)
- Jul : 14,614 (-26.9%)
- Aug : 12,481 (-35.4%)
- Sep : 13,036 (-23.5%)
- Oct : 25,737 (+68.1%)
- Nov : 14,466 (-14.6%)
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Varmint
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I assume Honda is also allocating cars to the markets where they sell best (or at the highest profit). For example, we (North America) are probably not getting a full serving of CR-Zs. They sell better in other countries. On the other hand, we may be getting more than a fair share of the new CR-Vz.
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danielgr
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Varmint wrote:
I assume Honda is also allocating cars to the markets where they sell best (or at the highest profit). For example, we (North America) are probably not getting a full serving of CR-Zs. They sell better in other countries. On the other hand, we may be getting more than a fair share of the new CR-Vz.
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Imho don't think "CR-Z production" has reached the bottleneck. I can see two factors being more important:
1) IMA prod limit (their current capacity and Sanyo's deal for the batteries after being bought by Panasonic). Fact is, CR-Z isn't selling in huge numbers anywhere in the world, but Honda is cracking up between 12k and 14k hybrids a month in JP, and they all share the IMA components with each other. That somehow echoes your point, I just don't think Honda is "keeping CR-Z's for JP", but simply "making as many Freeds and Fits as they can" ...
2) Thai floods impact (just like the Tsunami) depends on models, so the CR-Z could be worse hit than other cars. All I know is that I crashed my car mid November and had to wait until the last week of December to get it clean because they were waiting for a part that was made in Thailand for nearly a month... Now I have to guess "new CR-Zs" were having similar problems, but then again might just be "like other cars" (JP production was down ~40% in November, at about half October level, which had been +18% on 2010).
Anyway, people have to be pretty cynic not to recognize the impact on Honda hybrids sales from the 3/11 disaster. Here is the CR-Z sales history (starting from first full month), and few would have bet on a 2-seater sales to drop during the high-selling summer months coming from a very strong spring-time. Same way no-one would bet for sales to increase October-December heading into the cold winter if there had not been some more to it than "market demand".
As you can see, sales are recovering, and only time will tell if the tsunami made Honda lose the opportunity window for such a niche vehicle, or if once production recovers the CR-Z can shine as it should. At USD 20k is really a hell of a unique car you get (paid more than 30k for mine).
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