Hitachi 🇯🇵

Hitachi was founded by engineer Namihei Odaira in 1910 in the city of the same name, in Ibaraki Prefecture. In air‑conditioning it boasts a series of firsts: in 1932 it developed its first 25‑ton centrifugal chiller and in 1952 it launched the EW‑50, Japan’s first room air‑conditioner, a window unit installed in a hotel in Kyoto that, due to electrical network limitations, barely delivered 200 W. It was small, expensive and little advertised, so Hitachi suspended production between 1954 and 1958; when it resumed it introduced the 101‑WL, the world’s first low‑profile compact window unit (1958), and in 1959 adopted the polar bear as the emblem of the range.

The list of innovations continues: the first air conditioner with a “dry” mode that dehumidifies without cooling (RA-228D, 1967), the slotted fin heat exchanger (1975), the first unit controlled by an integrated circuit (RAS-2203SI, 1977), the first scroll compressor for air conditioning (1983) and the four‑way cassette for open‑plan offices (1984). Since 1975 the domestic units have been called “Shirokuma‑kun” (“the white bear”), a name that remains alive in Japan. In October 1996 Hitachi introduced the world’s first PAM control, and the 1997 model RAS-501HX2 that debuted it has been registered by the National Museum of Nature and Science of Japan as essential historical material of the technology.

Spain is a central piece in Hitachi's European history: Hitachi Air Conditioning Products Europe was established on November 27, 1991 and in 1993 opened a new‑plant factory in Vacarisses (Barcelona) covering about 40,000 m², on a street named Ronda Shimizu in honor of the Japanese factory in Shizuoka. There semi‑industrial units, VRF and aerothermal systems are produced: about 51,000 units a year with 400 employees on twelve assembly lines.

In 2015 the business passed to the joint venture Johnson Controls‑Hitachi (60 % JCI, 40 % Hitachi). In July 2024 Bosch announced the purchase of that company and Johnson Controls' residential business for 8 000 million dollars, the largest deal in its history, closed in 2025; the brand continues to be sold as Hitachi Cooling & Heating.

In Spain

Hitachi was, according to technicians' memory, the first Japanese company to enter Spain, and it did so through the large door of hotels rather than the domestic window door. A Mallorcan installer who started working in 1972, at fifteen years old, recounted in a forum in 2009 that his company “had exclusive rights throughout Spain for the Hitachi and Amana brands,” and described the product: “with Hitachi we only installed capacities from 48,000 BTU (12,000 frig/h) water‑cooled, vertical ducted systems; some we had to convert to air‑cooled condensation (remote condenser) Frimetal, Friga‑Bohn brands.” In other words, vertical direct‑expansion cabinets with water condensers, the type that conditioned “hotels, generally noble areas, or fan‑coil systems in rooms,” during the full swing of the Balearic tourism boom. “It was Carrier’s alternative,” he added, “but its unrivaled quality; today there are still many units in operation; all components are Hitachi brand: compressors, motors, contactors, relays, fuses.” His conclusion was bitter: “Hitachi simply let the air‑conditioning market slip away.”

That same thread, opened by a user who wondered why no one was talking about Hitachi, depicts the situation in 2009: “in 20 years I’ve only seen a couple and just in passing,” said a technician; “they’re very good, but they don’t sell much, they’re expensive and they don’t sound like Daikin, Mitsubishi, Panasonic or Fujitsu,” summarized another from Málaga, and a third praised the Hitachi Utopia he had installed. The brand had lost the 90s race to its compatriots.

Today Hitachi Cooling & Heating, with more than eighty years of history, is marketed in Spain under license from Bosch Home Comfort Group, with its own network of distributors. For the enthusiast, a water‑cooled Hitachi cabinet from the 70s in a hotel basement in Mallorca is one of the most interesting pieces of the first Japanese wave.

The entire file is based on the thread “Does anyone know the Hitachi brand or has it been bought?” from elaireacondicionado.com (August‑September 2009), from which the testimony of “guiem mallorca” (national exclusive of Hitachi and Amana, 48,000 BTU, water condensation, vertical ducts, conversion to remote condenser with Frimetal and Friga‑Bohn, all components Hitachi, “let the market slip away”) and the replies of ELEUTERIO, “the kid”, S.A.T. and climasan about the scarce presence of the brand in 2009 are taken literally. In collecting, we have not found any Spanish Hitachi air‑conditioning advertisement from the ’70s or ’80s. The current situation (Bosch Home Comfort license, distributor network) is listed on the official website hitachiaircon.com.

The testimony provides technical data that is not found in any other Spanish source: the minimum capacity that was installed (48,000 BTU, about 12,000 refrigeration units per hour, i.e., equipment for lounges and common areas, not for rooms), water condensation as the standard of the 70s and its conversion to air with remote condensers from Frimetal and Friga‑Bohn, and the “vertical duct distribution” system. It also notes that “all components are Hitachi brand,” which explains the reputation for reliability that the brand retained among technicians, and the contrast with Amana, the other exclusive line of the same company, which covered the rooftop segment. Overall, it describes how a 1970s Mallorcan installer combined two imports—one Japanese and one American—to climate‑control the island’s hospitality sector.

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us.