Nissan has unveiled ambitious plans to launch growing numbers of electrified vehicles, as well as expand and evolve its autonomous driving systems.
Among the targets, Nissan is aiming to sell one million electrified vehicles – either pure electric models or those with e-POWER powertrains – annually by fiscal 2022.
“Our product and technology strategy is dedicated to positioning Nissan to lead the automotive, technology and business evolution,” Philippe Klein, Nissan’s chief planning officer, said.
“Our efforts are focused on delivering Nissan Intelligent Mobility, encompassing the three core elements of electrification, autonomous drive, connectivity and new mobility services.”
Speaking at a media briefing alongside senior vice presidents Takao Asami and Ogi Redzic, who lead the respective autonomous driving and connectivity projects at the Alliance, Klein reaffirmed that the midterm plan aims to boost annualised revenue by 30 per cent to 16.5 trillion yen by the end of fiscal year 2022.
An electric future
As part of its electrification strategy, Klein said Nissan will launch a product offensive in China led by a new C-segment electric vehicle this year, derived from Nissan LEAF technology.
The product offensive will also include an affordable EV in China through the Alliance joint venture eGT New Energy Automotive.
Nissan will also continue to expand its e-POWER technology, already offered on the Nissan Note and Nissan Serena in Japan. More than 129,000 Note e-POWER models were sold in Japan in its first year, with more than two-thirds of Note customers opting for e-POWER models versus the baseline model.
Nissan expects that electrified vehicles – including electric vehicles and e-POWER models – will make up 40 per cent of the company’s sales in Japan and Europe by 2022 and 50 per cent by 2025. In the US, the expectation is about 20-30 per cent by 2025, while in China it’s 35-40 per cent.
Autonomous movements
As part of its strategy for autonomous driving systems, Nissan announced plans to deploy ProPILOT technology in 20 models in 20 markets by 2022. The company expects to sell 1 million ProPILOT-equipped vehicles a year by 2022.
This will be followed by enhancing ProPILOT to automate multilane driving on highways and managing vehicle destinations. The enhanced capability will be introduced in Japan as a pilot project within one year.
“Based on Nissan’s history of providing world-first safety technologies, we continue to evolve autonomous technology towards hands-free, eyes-off convenience in all environments.” Mr Asami said.
“Already we have more vehicles on the road with semi-autonomous capabilities than any other automaker, and we continue to learn from this experience to bring benefits to customers.”
