Recently, there is a news that has caused a hot discussion in the media, foreign media reported that Nissan will stop developing most of the new gasoline engines, only retain the fuel engine used in the US market for pickup models, and the future research and development focus and resources will move closer to electric vehicles. It is reported that Nissan invests about $4.3 billion in research and development costs on models and fuel engines every year, and these funds may be used in the future to develop electric vehicles and related technologies.
In the past few years, Nissan, which has done low brand power in exchange for market space, has overdrawn the possibility of upgrading the Japanese product brand, as long as it is a fuel vehicle, then Nissan can only compete fiercely with local brands in various countries in the cheap market. It is worth mentioning that nissan's performance in 2021 has picked up, and operating profit and net profit have increased. In this regard, Nissan CEO identified that the company has steadily improved its operating conditions through the launch of new vehicles, continuous improvement of sales quality, and continuous implementation of fine financial management.
However, friends who know a little about Nissan know that it is nothing more than continuing to squeeze costs, and in the impact of chips, Nissan has suffered far less impact than other brands, and there has been a phenomenon of headwind growth, in which the luck component is higher than Nissan's own competitive strength.
With Nissan announcing that it will stop developing most of its new gasoline engines, we can still see the dilemma Nissan faces. In fact, Nissan is not going to stop selling fuel vehicles completely, and for countries around the world that still allow the sale of fuel vehicles, Nissan will continue to improve existing engines instead of developing new engines, and the factories that produce these engines will continue to operate. This is equivalent to cutting down R&D, but not intending to cut down production projects.
If Nissan further compresses costs in terms of power research and development, it is clear that there is no "full electrification" to have a pattern.
Speaking of this, I think everyone can also understand that Nissan is still the Nissan, and turning around in the field of electrification is not the primary goal. Further control of operating costs is the primary goal, and Nissan has been cut beyond cut, this time the knife is on the head of the research and development team, but also a bit of "dog jumping the wall" meaning.
Of course, some people question that Nissan is not necessarily unable to do so in the field of electrification.
I don't know if you remember a news in early 2021, Nissan announced the suspension of plans to cooperate with Daimler and Ford to develop fuel cell vehicles, focusing on electric vehicles. But a year later, Nissan has not made much progress in the field of electric vehicles, and there is no feasible plan for future new products to announce to the outside world.
Then combined with today's news, we can probably see that Nissan's original intention is to eat the old. Taking advantage of the chip problem, Nissan wanted to rely on the previous technology for the final harvest. It can be inferred from this that the last time Nissan did not act, it relied on the alliance with France and saved the imminent bankruptcy of Nissan with the help of Ghosn. This time, Nissan is going to die again, apparently losing confidence in its future.