TOKYO – Nissan Motor has unveiled its first new electric car in a decade, as part of a review of its lineup and strategy that, according to the Japanese automaker, which is in financial strain, will regain its brilliance after heavy losses.
The Ariya’s reception, which will go on sale next year, will be the first test of how Nissan is abandoning its technique under former President Carlos Ghosn, who led the corporation into a fight for global market participation. Makoto Uchida, who took over as CEO last year, needs Nissan to aim for higher quality revenue and sales after a loss of 671 billion yen ($6.2 billion) for the year ended In March, its worst result in 20 years.
“Nissan is not yet at the point where it is,” Uchida said at Wednesday’s launch, and described the Ariya as “the new face of Nissan” that delivers the car manufacturer’s most productive driving experience.
The Ariya, the Japanese carmaker’s first all-electric crossover SUV, has a maximum diversity of 610 kilometers, and the new EV powertrain can reach a speed of 37 five kilometers in 30 minutes. The Ariya can increase at a speed of one hundred kilometers, consistent with the hour in just five.1 seconds, on a par with the iconic Nissan Fairlady Z sports car. It will go on sale in mid-2021 in Japan with a value of about five million yen ($46,000).
The Ariya is Nissan’s first new electric vehicle in 10 years, outside of Chinese activity. Nissan’s first all-electric vehicle, the Leaf hatchback, was introduced in 2010 as the first mass-produced electric vehicle. The company sold 470,000 Leaf vehicles.
“People were skeptical about electric cars at the time,” Uchida added. “But now many automakers have introduced them.” He recalled that Nissan’s great knowledge of electric cars had allowed him to expand a new platform committed to electric cars. “Unlimited possibilities, introduced through Ariya, will emerge from this platform,” he said.
At the event, Nissan also unveiled a new logo, which will be used for the first time in the Ariya. Nissan’s stock rose 8.5% sometime on Wednesday before launch.
Electric and hybrid cars are a key detail in Nissan’s redesign of the strategy, which is from a French-Japanese alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi Motors.
The automaker said in May that it planned to launch 12 new models in the next 18 months and planned to bring at least 8 pure models to market until March 2024.
Obsolete models compared to those in their competition have alienated Nissan dealers and consumers worldwide. The automaker sold only 4.93 million cars in its fiscal year through March, 15% less than its peak two years ago. Uchida announced in May that the company would focus on its core models by reducing the total number to less than 55 from 69 in fiscal 2018. It also announced that it would renew the life cycles of cars every 4 years.
On the other hand, the company will reduce its production capacity by 20% and close its factories in Indonesia, a market that was considered as strategic under Ghosn as the Brazilian tycoon sought to stimulate production in emerging countries to increase sales. Nissan’s large annual loss over the past monetary year generated 603 billion yen in restructuring and depreciation-related prices.
Other automotive players are also moving resources to the electric car market. Honda Motor announced last week that it had purchased a 1% stake in Chinese electric vehicle battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) to jointly expand electric car batteries. Daimler’s subsidiary, Mercedes-Benz, also announced a strategic merger with Chinese automotive battery manufacturer Farasis Energy (Ganzhou).
The electric vehicle market is attracting the world’s attention, as Tesla has shown. The company’s market capitalization has surpassed that of industry giant Toyota Motor, even with annual sales of only 370,000 vehicles. While Europe is experiencing an increase in energy demand through environmental regulations, analysts that electric cars still want more time to expand in Asia and be successful basically because of the maximum cost of their battery.
Backed by recent years through government incentives, China has the world’s largest electric car market. But the government has cut subsidies and the market has been on a downward trend since 2019.
In Japan, electric cars, adding plug-in hybrids, accounted for 0.9% of total domestic vehicle sales in 2019, according to the International Energy Agency, well below 4.9% for China and 2.1% in the United States.
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