In 2006, Honda overtakes Nissan in annual sales to become the 2^nd-largest Japanese automaker.


While Toyota and hybrid have become synonymous, Nissan believes that the future belongs to vehicles which entirely do away with an internal combustion engine. The Japanese arm of Renault believes that plug-in vehicles will make up 10% of the new car market by 2020; and it wants to become a world leader in electric vehicles.

For the first 3-5 years, government subsidies will be required to keep Nissan's plug-in offerings affordable. After that, says Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, economies of scale will take over.

Nissan's flagship in this effort is the Leaf EV hatchback. As its elemental name suggests, Nissan will promote the car as a simple, affordable electric vehicle. Roughly the size of a Versa, the Leaf offers about 100 miles of range. With the help of a special charger, it can be recharged to 80% in about 30 minutes. A more common 200V outlet will fully charge the lithium-ion battery pack in 8 hours.

First-generation Leafs, launching for 2011, will have 3.3 kW charging systems. 6.6kW charging arrives for 2012 (earler models can be upgraded).

The Leaf will be followed by a zero-emission Nissan light-commercial vehicle, and a pure-electric Infiniti compact luxury car.


Following Renault's May 2007 introduction of its eco² appellation, affixed to models whose CO₂ emissions do not exceed 140 g/km, Renault affiliate Nissan in October 2008 announced Pure Drive. The new badging, which applies as defined by Renault, debuted on the Micra; Note; Tiida, and Qashqai with 1.2-liter and 1.4-liter gasoline engines, and 1.5-liter diesel motors.


If you own a Nissan or Infiniti vehicle, there's a good chance that Nissan's VQ V6 is under its hood. With 7 million built from 1994 through 2008, and production continuing, Yoshiyuki Kimura's V6 design is a popular, free-revving powerplant that has cemented Nissan's engineering reputation.

The VQ is not Nissan's first V6; that honor belongs to the VG, with its cast-iron block; aluminum heads; a single overhead cam per head, and two valves per cylinder. Though reliable, and though friendlier to transverse-engined front-wheel-drive vehicles, the VG did not garner sufficient internal support to replace the (much loved) inline-6. That task fell to the VQ.


As Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn prepares, in April 2005, to take the Renault-Nissan corporate reins, the company is all the rage. In the six years since Renault bought it, Nissan has blossomed from being merely the tentatively hopeful subject of a concerned Japanese media, to the darling of the automotive media as a whole.

Back in 1999, that could hardly have been envisioned; it could not have been done, or so the pundits predicted.

Nissan at the time, in the U.S. market, had precisely one truly unique vehicle: the Xterra. Today, its coffers revitalized, Nissan has a line-up that is both broader and more convincing. It fields both a 2^nd-generation Xterra and, alongside it, the same vehicles that once constituted the Xterra's less capable competition. As Autoweek put it back then, when the plucky little Xterra was distinguishing itself, "crossovers release not only small, interesting sporting cars from the responsibilities of broad appeal, but they also allow for the return of trucks to their utilitarian roots, freed of responsibility to both work hard and pamper" ('One Jumbo Jambalaya, Hold the Hot Sauce,' Daniel Pund, Autoweek, April 10^th, 2000).


Even in Nissan's darker days, at the turn of the Millennium, there was a core group of Nissan enthusiasts who were well ahead of the curve: Xterra buyers, the keepers of the faith, fans of what Nissan has described as the "cornerstone vehicle in launching Nissan's remarkable product revival in the late-90s."

That it drew young, off-roading opinion leaders to its corner was Xterra's ace in the hole. Like Jeep's Wrangler, Xterra proves particularly successful at attracting younger buyers; but, while important, that's just part of the story.

As Xterra began rolling out of Smyrna, Tennessee on April 9^th, 1999, Renault had just purchased Nissan; Carlos Ghosn was still better known for being Le Cost Cutter at Renault than for turning Nissan around, and Nissan as a whole was tumbling both in the U.S. and at home. A heartbeat at Nissan was evident only in the 1999 Z Concept, but the production 350Z that would attempt to reinforce Nissan's heritage in the public's mind was still four years away.

Xterra was good - very good, in fact - and good in a convincingly different way: a distinctively hard-edged, body-on-frame entry in a market full of soft-roader, cute-ute look-alikes. The harsher of Xterra's edges - rough n' tumble, somewhat gawky styling; a skittish pick-up truck ride, and a plasticky interior - merely added to its aura.

The appeal of this cheap n' cheerful offroad warrior was not lost on the media. Autoweek called this appeal a back-to-basics truckishness, welcoming this more focused vehicle as a stand-out in its class.

So much was the Xterra's charismatically pitted outlook an embodiment of Nissan's corporate state at the time that one wonders whether a more affluent, aloof company could have conceived of it. As Nissan Division VP and General Manager Mark McNabb puts it, "Xterra showed the automotive industry that good things happen when you focus on meeting customers' unmet needs, rather than following the competition."

Oddly enough, this anticipate-and-lead strategy - as opposed to sensing and responding to the market - may have been entirely coincidental; more a function of the company's haphazard state than a focused gamble.

As Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn summarizes, "Nissan's engineers were imposing specifications that didn't take into account the current industry standards and weren't necessarily a response to any specific customer demand."

"Engineering didn't listen to what the suppliers were saying. The company had no real vision of the business it was in" (Turnaround: How Carlos Ghosn rescued Nissan, David Magee, HarperBusiness, 2004).

Certainly, it was the first of many gambles and, as such, perhaps the most original and risky gamble of them all.


"Nissan's corporate personality was confused," admits Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn.

"It gave the impression of an amalgamation of elements piled up on top of one another without anything resembling a strategy" (SHIFT: Inside Nissan's Historic Revival, Carlos Ghosn and Philippe Ries, Doubleday, 2005).