Japanese carmaker Nissan has EV ambitions – and it is pumping $18b to get there

Dubai: Japanese carmaker Nissan will be pumping $18 billion to make its electric car ambitions come true between now and 2030. That would mean launching 15 new EVs and 23 new ‘electrified’ models altogether.

It’s all there in the ‘Nissan Ambition 2030’, a broad roadmap on how the company plans to meet its goals by the end of the decade. Other manufacturers too are pushing with intent into the same space, come out with competing versions of how they will try and get to a point where EVs will make a sizeable share of their overall sales.

Keep that distance

With this announcement on Monday (November 29), Nissan wants to put some sort of stop to all of the attention that diverted to the former chairman Carlos Ghosn scandal that blew up in late 2019 and escalated through all of last year. It came even as Nissan unveiled record losses for the last financial year, at which time Nissan’s new management promised radical change.

And radical change it has delivered – at least in terms of what Nissan hopes to achieve. By 2030, the maker hopes to have 50 per cent of its production given over to electric driven. But Nissan will not get into making claims over market share and anything related to it. That too is a clean break from the past.

The other thing that Uchida made clear was that Nissan would bind itself closer to its partners Renault and Mitsubishi in bringing the changes to market. That means a lot of shared technology and platforms – and, of course, keep costs down.

What does the ‘Ambition’ mean?

Nissan has already given a taste of those longer-term plans by airing the Ariya EV in the UAE, first at the Expo and then at the recent #NoFilterDXB auto show. Concrete plans as to when the model will be launched is still up in the air, but the Ariya will, with other planned models make up the electric car thrust.

“With Nissan Ambition 2030, we will drive the new age of electrification, advance technologies to reduce carbon footprint and pursue new business opportunities,’ said Uchida.

Investments of 2 trillion yen will be channeled over the next five years. The target is to have an electric car representation across these territories by 2026 along these lines:

• Europe - more than 75 per cent of sales;

• Japan - more than 55 per cent of sales;

• China - more than 40 per cent of sales; and

• In the US – 40 per cent of EV sales in FY2030.