Nissan Warns It Must Launch New Cars Faster Or ‘We Won’t Survive’

During a meeting with suppliers earlier this year, Toyota’s then-CEO Koji Sato issued a stark warning: “Unless things change, we will not survive. I want everyone to acknowledge this sense of crisis. Right now, we in the automotive industry are battling for our very survival.”

As it turns out, his sentiments are echoed by fellow Japanese automaker Nissan, as a senior executive has just made a similar statement, albeit from a different perspective.

While Toyota is implementing something called the “Smart Standard Activity,” which essentially lowers the bar for supplier specifications to cut costs, Nissan is drastically reducing development times to bring new models to market faster. Speaking with Automotive News, Kazuyuki Yamaguchi, corporate vice president of Product Development No. 1 in the R&D division, also highlighted the sense of urgency for radical change or risk facing extinction:

‘We need to introduce attractive products into the market more quickly. Otherwise, we won’t survive. It’s a very simple message.

[Product development] was very democratic before, but it was very time-consuming. We no longer have the luxury of time. Now, it’s more clean and lean, without inefficient back-and-forth. The schedule is much shorter today.’

Shorter Development Times, Fewer Models And Platforms

Ideally, Nissan wants to move at the pace every established automaker aspires to: the so-called “China speed.” The wheels are already in motion to reduce the development time needed for an all-new model from 52 to 37 months or even less. Related models won’t take 50 months as they did under the old approach, but just 30 months.

Supporting this new strategy is a more optimized parts bin, with Nissan drastically reducing the number of platforms from 13 to just seven by the middle of the next decade. Another goal is to cut parts complexity by as much as 70 percent while shrinking the lineup from 56 to 45 models. In the future, the products will be bundled into four separate categories: Heartbeat, Core, Growth, and Partner.

2027 Nissan Skyline rendering by Motor1.com

Photo by: Theophilus Chin | Motor1

A New Skyline Is Coming Soon

Some new arrivals will come even faster. Debuting this winter, the next-generation Skyline apparently took a mere 26 months to develop. The rear-wheel-drive sedan is the first model engineered under the new R&D approach, which is designed to shorten lead times and get new models to market faster. It will carry a Nissan badge in Japan, but an Infiniti twin for the United States is planned as a potential Q50 replacement.

Not long after the Skyline/Q50 twins arrive, the Xterra will make an exciting return as a body-on-frame SUV priced below $40,000. A new GT-R with a combustion engine is officially in the works, but it will take many years before it reaches the market. The same can be said of the next Z, which Nissan has already said won’t arrive before 2030.

2028 Nissan Xterra teaser

Photo by: Nissan

Motor1’s Take: A lot is going on at Nissan these days, and we’re not just talking about a product shake-up with more rapid new-model rollouts. The company is closing seven factories and two design studios, reducing its headcount by 20,000 workers, and lowering annual production capacity by one million vehicles. It’s also moving away from chasing volume, as CEO Ivan Espinosa admitted that doing so was a wrong move.

It’s rare for an automaker to make such sweeping changes all at once. Whether they will pay off remains an open question, since the results of Nissan’s overhaul won’t be felt overnight. The new products sound promising, and hopefully, the company will live up to the expectations surrounding the Skyline, Xterra, and other big names.