“We are committed to NMUK,” vowed the CEO. “We are just rolling out the Leaf and you saw that beautiful Juke, [which] will also be European. These are examples of what we’re doing with NMUK.”
The fact that the all-electric Juke shares its architecture, batteries and motors with the new Leaf it’s built alongside shows that the Sunderland plant already conforms to Nissan Vision’s new efficient engineering philosophy.
Europe is loss-making – and regulation is “unstable”
Nissan’s chief performance officer Guillaume Cartier revealed that “the ambition is to go [for] half a million [units] in Europe”. That’s by 2030 and a big jump on the 2024-25 financial year reporting soon, with sales projected to be 330,000.
“Half a million is what we want to be and I would also say that’s what we need to be, to make sure earnings will be higher than the fixed costs.” Nissan is struggling to break even, because the total market is still smaller than pre-Covid levels and competition is intensifying with new Chinese brands taking share.
“Europe is not an easy case: I think it’s one of the most difficult,” Cartier told us. “But we are committed to Europe as we know this is an area where you can test and develop some technology that can have a good impact on the rest of the world.” E-power, the range extender hybrid technology blooded in the UK-assembled Qashqai, is a case in point.
Cartier, like executives across the European car industry, bemoaned the cost of meeting the world’s toughest regulatory regime here, and the fact that Europe is loosening the ‘CAFE’ emissions obligations and no longer sounds committed to totally banning sales of new combustion cars in 2035. He also namechecked the UK, which – at least officially – plans to go 100 per cent electric five years earlier.
“If you look at Europe and the UK, you have some specific difficulty, because from a regulation point of view, this is not stable.” He continued: “The UK is not really clear and the government, we are asking them to help us, because sometimes [politicians move faster] than we can follow.” But he added that dialogue was good, with Nissan collaborating as it seeks the clarity that will help it plan its products long-term.
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