The Nissan Leaf was the first mass market BEV in 2010. Nissan built battery factories and assembly lines on three continents to make it.
16 years later, Nissan has one new model in the USA, the Ariya. Meanwhile upstart Tesla is worth $875 billion and Nissan is worth $9.5 billion. But to reassure everyone that Nissan is really going to compete, it announced a new Leaf and
And 15 years late, an INFINITI EV. Maybe.
Then from late FY27, an all-new Nissan EV is scheduled to commence production at Nissan’s Canton, Mississippi plant in the U.S. The all-new model will be an adventure-focused SUV. It will be joined in FY28 by a luxury INFINITI EV SUV (inspired by the Vision QXe concept) that pairs the brand’s latest Artistry in Motion design language with a suite of technology features.
Hold on, this gives me déjà vu. An INFINITI EV in 2028? That is 15 years late! Back when Nissan was riding high on the relative success from being early with the Leaf, it had similar big plans:
Infiniti set out to build a truly luxurious electric vehicle that will be worthy of the brand, while not compromising anything that an electric car signifies. A recent report says that the EV is still in the works, and Infiniti confirmed it would see production, but some delays should be expected. “There are some interesting advances in electric technology we hadn’t anticipated when we showed the LE, which, by delaying a little bit, we can incorporate into the car.”
— Andrea Cristea Ultimate Car Blog, July 2013
Those 2013 plans came to nothing, but this time it will be different, honest.
Nissan, Ford, Honda, Toyota, BMW all made a step forward with a decent BEV that got into production, then faltered (and in Honda and Toyota’s case, multiple times with the Honda EV/Fit EV/Clarity EV and two generations of RAV4 EVs). Business school graduates will be writing about their failures to make progress on the new path for decades. I suspect it’s due to open hostility from the managers and engineers in the rest of the company.
