Mitsubishi Won't Survive The Electric Car Revolution

Every brand goes through a slump, and in that time, you look to the future for something new and exciting. But not even my crystal ball is optimistic enough to see anything exciting coming the way of Mitsubishi.

For starters, the new Outlander Sport - the one that isn't coming to America - is just a rebadged Renault Captur that doesn't even get a unique design. Then there's the new Mitsubishi Colt that's been teased in Europe, which will be nothing more than a rebadged Renault Clio.

Mitsubishi is planning to leverage electric architecture from Nissan and Renault to build future EVs, but, I can see it already, these will be flavorless badging exercises or light redesigns with nothing unique.

The only glimmer of hope Mitsubishi has in the future vehicle department is the L200 midsize pickup, but even that won't be a unique prospect and will share a platform with the next-gen Nissan Navara, the global equivalent to the Frontier.

Does any of this seem even vaguely exciting? Not to me, it doesn't, as all I see is a brand that's lost its own identity and is struggling to maintain sales volumes by passing off someone else's homework as its own.

Speaking of those sales volumes, in 2022, Mitsubishi sold 85,810 vehicles in the USA. That was down nearly 20% compared to 2021, and was 1,962 units less than what it managed to shift in 2020 - yes, that 2020, the one with the global pandemic.

Sure, there were global supply chain issues and a war in the Ukraine to deal with, but Mitsubishi's 2022 sales figures are the lowest they've been since 2014. And if you compare that to the brand's best ever sales year in the US, the picture is dire. In 2002, Mitsubishi sold 345,915 cars in America, and in the two years before that, it sold more than 300,000. Now it can't even manage a third of that.

Mitsubishi launched in the US in 1982, and it took the brand only six years to reach six-digit annual sales figures. Now, it can't even hit that number.

And you know what Mitsubishi's answer to that is? To dust off the iconic Ralliart name and slap it on a bunch of uninspiring crossovers as a styling package. Heresy.

Things are cyclical in the automotive industry, and we've seen brands go through good and bad patches. In the early-to-mid 2000s, Toyota was boring and churned out batch after batch of anonymous, characterless, dull automobiles that left us feeling nothing. Absolutely nothing. But you know what Toyota had on its side? Three things:

• Brand loyalty - People would buy a Toyota for the badge on the hood, even if the product was dull, because they had decades of experience with a brand that was, if nothing else, consistent.
• A reputation for reliability - Even if you weren't buying new, buying a used car from Toyota meant Toyota engineering and inherent Toyota reliability.
• Sales figures - Even when Toyota was at its dullest, it still had a strong enough combination of product and brand loyalty to sell millions of cars to the US audience. Millions. This meant that even when the brand's success dipped, as it did from 2008-2011, it still had the money at its disposal to reinvent itself anew.

And those things afforded Toyota the ability to reforge its identity and become one of the best-selling sports car brands in America.

Nissan had much the same issue, where uninspiring products eventually resulted in poor sales, and the brand needed reinvention. But it's managed to do that, and a strong customer base was willing to flock back to the brand they'd once fallen in love with.

But Mitsubishi doesn't have brand loyalty, and its sales volumes are tiny by comparison. I think we can all agree the brand needs a drastic overhaul and a brand reinvention to bring it to the front of people's minds again, but such rebirth requires massive investment, and massive investment requires strong enough sales figures to have money available.

When Toyota decided to make its brand exciting again - thanks to Akio Toyoda - it was able to invest billions of dollars into exciting products like the Toyota 86, the GR Yaris, and the GR Corolla. Even if it relied on Subaru and BMW for help with the 86 and GR Supra, there was money to be invested and partners willing to trade expertise for the hybrid and hydrogen technology Toyota had at its disposal. Mitsubishi has no such technological advancements that anyone else wants.

When you look at all this together, the picture it paints for Mitsubishi is dire. It's been years since the brand had anything class-leading, decades since it had anything iconic, and its current and future lineups are neither anything special nor anything unique. The reliance on platforms and technology from its alliance partners may help Mitsubishi reduce costs in the near term, but what good is that if Mitsubishi isn't using said cost-cutting to reinvent itself and invest in something new?

As much as it pains me to say it, I fear Mitsubishi is going to become another Lancia - a once-great brand that rested on its laurels and became nothing more than a supporting act, an also-ran used to support a larger group's star of the show.

And yes, you'll probably chime in that Lancia is in the midst of a revival and that Stellantis is letting the Italian icon reinvigorate itself with EVs like the Pu+Ra concept, and you'd be right. But Lancia now has the backing of the fifth largest automaker in the world in Stellantis, and that war chest of finances and technological resources is something Mitsubishi doesn't have.

Remember, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi is an alliance; no parent company is looking out for the best interests of its child brands. Each of these brands wants the best for themselves, and they'll take as much as they can get and share as little as humanly possible to achieve that goal.

With little to offer in the way of advanced powertrain solutions, platforms for new market segments, or anything else for that matter, I fear Mitsubishi may be too far gone.

I don't think the brand will become totally defunct, as there is still enough love for it in Japan and a few other markets, but unless something drastic changes, and fast, I don't see Mitsubishi surviving the electric revolution in America.