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Nissan plans to pour $9.5 bill...The Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer, Nissan Motor Company Ltd is planning to invest $9.5 billion in China over the next five years. The company is planning to invest with its joint-venture partner as it seeks to become a top three automaker in the world's biggest market.
Nissan is stuck in the China market as a second-tier player for a very long time. Dongfeng Group said that they plan to boost their production to 2.6 million vehicles each year by 2022, which is now 1.5 million.
Dubbing its strategy as “Triple One”, Nissan plans to achieve the objective by focusing on electric cars and Venucia, a no-frills local brand Nissan operates in China. Nissan also aims to boost the sales of its light commercial vans and trucks.
For nearly two decades General Motors Co and Volkswagen AG have been dominating China’s auto market with each selling 4 million vehicles last year.
“We need to go full-throttle aggressive”, Seki said. And he also added that if they didn't do that, they would eventually fall behind and fail to grab the market share.
Part of the strategy is to keep growing the Nissan brand and the company's premium Infiniti brand, Seki said.
Nissan plans to come up with lower-cost electric cars by locally sourcing electric motors and other key EV components from suppliers in China in order to generate large enough EV volume.
Seki said, without elaborating that Nissan plans to launch three such lower-cost EVs under the name, Venucia in 2019.
Nissan established Venucia jointly with Dongfeng and the brand began selling cars in 2012, battling with China's low-cost, no-frills indigenous brands such as those run by Geely and Great Wall Motor.
Venucia uses retired Nissan technologies such as platforms and transmissions. Venucia sold 143,000 vehicles last year, up 22.7 percent from 2016.