Charging into sustainability
Nissan is planning to roll out 23 electrified models by 2030
NISSAN MOTOR CO., one of the world’s leaders in the democratization of electric vehicles and the maker of the world’s first mass-market EV — the Nissan Leaf, back in 2010 — recently unveiled another major milestone for the company: its commitment to what it calls the “Nissan Ambition 2030.” This is its latest long-term vision to eventually become a completely environmentally sustainable company, through developing smart ecosystems with integrated mobility for a safer and more inclusive society.
It may first sound like an extremely vast concept, but Nissan made sure to spell it out clearly: the Japanese company intends to further accelerate its global democratization of EVs by launching 23 new “electrified models” by the year 2030. Of these, 15 will be new electric vehicle models. And by that time, the company hopes that at least 50% of its vehicle portfolio would already be classified as electrified products across the Nissan and Infiniti brands. Eventually, Nissan wishes to achieve carbon neutrality across the entire life cycle of its products by fiscal year 2050.
In order to jump-start all this, Nissan has declared that it will be investing about two trillion yen over the next five years into expanding its operations. Makoto Uchida, the car giant’s CEO, remarked, “The role of companies to address societal needs is increasingly heightened. With Nissan Ambition 2030, we will drive the new age of electrification, advance technologies to reduce carbon footprint and pursue new business opportunities. We want to transform Nissan to become a sustainable company that is truly needed by customers and society.”
As charging infrastructure and energy management are both crucial elements of the motoring market’s successful transition to the normalization of electric vehicles, Nissan seeks to help establish more charging stations and a global battery supply system that can meet the growing demands of the EV market. Additionally, Nissan also intends to launch its proprietary all-solid-state (ASSB) batteries by fiscal year 2028. For this, it is already preparing its pilot plant in Yokohama, Japan for its production. ASSBs are more efficient and bring the production cost of batteries down quite significantly. It is a major leap in making EVs more practical for consumers.
Finally, Nissan also seeks to deliver ever-improved driver assistance and intelligence technologies to their customers through products in the pipeline. It intends to expand its proprietary ProPilot technology to over 2.5 million Nissan and Infiniti vehicles by 2026. In the past, I have already driven the Nissan Leaf equipped with ProPilot2 while in Japan, and I found it rather impressive at the time. Nissan also plans to further improve on its autonomous vehicle technologies, with the goal of already incorporating some next-generation LIDAR systems on its vehicles by 2030.
“We are proud of our long track record of innovation, and of our role in delivering the EV revolution. With our new ambition, we continue to take the lead in accelerating the natural shift to EVs by creating customer pull through an attractive proposition by driving excitement, enabling adoption and creating a cleaner world,” shared Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta.
