Japanese car industry facing social challenge

The advent of Facebook, SnapChat, Skype and other forms of instant communication could be slowly killing the car industry.

Factor into the equation improving public transport, ride-sharing businesses and the shift of the population from country to city, and cars could go the way of the dodo in a couple of generations' time.

The issue is bigger than young people choosing not to buy new cars, too.

Physical freedom that personal cars provide is becoming less important to more and more people, the internet providing newfound levels of digital freedom, bridging the tyranny of distance that was more pronounced before the late 1990s, when terabytes of data were not shooting through the troposphere.

No, the broader effect of an indifference towards cars and the industry that creates them is that skilled workers nearing retirement age are simply not being replaced. This is becoming a serious issue in Japan and will likely affect other countries in due course.

When motoring.com.au asked several senior automotive executives in Japan what were the biggest issues facing the automotive industry today, the answer was not emissions regulations, safety pressures or technology rising.

It was the apathetic attitude of youngsters towards cars, a wholly social issue... And one not easily solved.

When the same question is asked in Australia, as recently expounded by a compelling book, 'What happened to the Car Industry', the answer is often a combination of falling demand, high Aussie dollar and meddling government.

But in Japan, few of these stresses have affected the automotive industry in a major way.

Rather, its country's ageing population and the difficulty in persuading young people to study automotive engineering – and pursue a career in the field – is the prominent challenge.

Nobuhiro Yamamoto, the chief engineer and program manager of the latest Mazda MX-5, spoke passionately on the subject.

"I'm hoping for the future kids will have more chances to enjoy fun vehicles and eventually feel like "Okay, I like those cars, I want to work for an automotive company in the future".

"I hope they will react and feel that way in future," said the Mazda Motor Corporation executive – a genuine rev-head who worked on the second-generation RX-7 rotary engine, not to mention the Le Mans 24 Hour-winning 787B quad rotor race car.

"I kind of feel sad about it," confessed Yamamoto-san.

When motoring.com.au pointed out that the advent of instant visual communication could be having an effect on younger people's attitude towards transportation in general, the executive concurred.

"Yeah that's one of the problems."

It's not an insurmountable problem, and the situation has the potential to benefit a number of Australians in the automotive industry, who will soon be looking for new opportunities as Ford, Holden and Toyota shut down their manufacturing operations here.

"Right now if you look at the young kids, they look at their parents driving vehicles; they don't really like it," said Yamamoto.

"So we need to make sure the younger generation get to feel fun cars, they can enjoy them. Right now kids don't have enjoyable experiences with cars that much," he observed.

One way around this is to create more affordable, engaging vehicles that appeal to younger drivers, much as Toyota and Mazda have done with new generation sports cars such as the 86 and MX-5.

But this alone won't fix the emerging problem. Far from it.

Resolving the issue won't be easy says Masashi Nakayama, chief designer at Mazda's design strategic studio.

"I do recognise that youngsters these days aren't so much interested in cars anymore. I don't think it's a fun job to create vehicles for people who aren't interested in cars from the start."

So how can the automotive industry get young people interested in cars again? Have your say in the comments below.