Nissan Rethinks US Plans After Missing Hybrid Wave

The Japanese automaker plans to re-evaluate its products for the U.S. market to better meet customer demand

Nissan saw sales growth in the last three months of 2023, although it’s not keeping pace with rivals. The company’s CFO Stephen Ma recently addressed the situation and acknowledged two significant opportunities for the Japanese brand: It needs to introduce more affordable cars to the market and bring hybrids to the USA.

Nissan’s hybrid technology, dubbed e-Power, is already available for sale in several global markets including Europe and Japan. However, one notable absence is America, where buyers cannot access it. In addition to this challenge, Nissan is contending with rising interest rates and bottlenecked supply chains, which are hindering its ability to meet the demand for cars in the U.S.

“The high-interest rate inflation is hampering affordability for the customer,” Stephen Ma said on Thursday. “So, we are focused on making sure we bring the right vehicles, in the right segments to customers.” Those changes are key because, between October and December, Nissan saw just a 5.6 percent increase in sales. That might sound fine, but it’s dwarfed by Honda, up 33 percent and Toyota, up 15.4 percent.

The issue appears to come down to Nissan’s inability to bring low-cost cars to market in large enough volume and its failure to meet demand on hybrids. Ma admitted as much, says Automotive News. While Honda and Toyota are both leveraging hybrid technology, Nissan doesn’t offer it here in the USA. On top of that, its two EV options, the Leaf and Aryia aren’t eligible for federal tax incentives so dealers are struggling to sell them.

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Tyler Slade, Nissan National Dealer Advisory Board chairman, recently made similar comments to Autonews.

“It’s becoming apparent to everybody [at Nissan’s U.S. and global headquarters] that a comprehensive hybrid powertrain product strategy in the U.S. is needed urgently…,” said Slade. “We are seeing competitors selling hybrids at a higher level, and we’re seeing them do it profitably. Nissan must offer hybrid variants on its core and highest-volume models — Sentra, Rogue, Kicks, Pathfinder and Altima. Toyota has announced they’re going 100 percent hybrid on the Camry. We must compete with that.”

Likely to the delight of dealers, the future appears to be a highly electrified one for Nissan in America. “Longer term, we want to make sure we are bringing more innovations to our electrified powertrains so that we can provide the right combination of value and technology,” Ma told Autonews. “We are now studying what we can do for the U.S. market… So, stay tuned. We will come back with some answer on what we can do with a hybrid in the U.S.”