TOKYO – A year after taking charge of ailing automaker Nissan Motor, chief executive officer Ivan Espinosa has unveiled a makeover to freshen its ageing line-up and set ambitious targets to boost US and China sales to levels not seen in years.
The Japanese automaker plans to reduce the number of models from the current 56 to 45 and streamline 80 per cent of its volume into three main “families” of vehicles built on shared platforms and which are geared for its biggest regions, it said on April 14.
The long-awaited strategy marks Mr Espinosa’s first effort to reshape Nissan after its troubled, two-decade long partnership with Renault and, more recently, an aborted merger with Honda Motor. The company is suffering from steep losses and mountainous debt, while its outdated range has failed to keep up with changing tastes and a shift to electric vehicles and hybrids in its key markets of Japan, China and the United States.
As part of its reboot, Nissan aims to sell more than 1 million cars each in the American and Chinese markets by 2030, reaching a level it has not hit since its 2019 fiscal year in the US and the 2021 fiscal year in China.
It hopes to do so with fresher products, including V6-engine hybrid versions of its best-selling Rogue compact crossover and a resuscitated Xterra SUV for the US. That renewed push into hybrids in the US comes after the company abandoned them in 2019, forcing it to sit out a recent boom in sales of gas-electrics by rivals Honda and Toyota Motor.
Unlike hybrids from those two peers, Nissan is using a technology it debuted a decade ago in its home market that uses a gas engine to charge batteries which propel the vehicle.
Nissan said it will prioritise fast vehicle development and cost efficiencies in China, strengthening its all-electric vehicle offerings and using the country as an export hub to overseas markets such as Latin America and South-east Asia. It plans to target those two regions with shipments of its Chinese-made N7 mid-sized sedan and Frontier Pro pick-up.
In Japan, Nissan said it will push deeper into smaller vehicles with a new compact car it expects to sell 550,000 units of annually by the fiscal year ending in 2031.
The carmaker also reiterated plans to upgrade its advanced driver-assistance systems, starting with an enhanced version of its ProPilot technology in its latest Elgrand minivan due out this summer in Japan. That will deploy “end-to-end autonomous” technology by early 2028, which aligns with an announcement in 2025 to upgrade cruise control and lane-keeping functions. BLOOMBERG
