Like several other OEMs across the globe, Nissan is currently undergoing massive changes to emerge on the other side as a lean, efficient and profitable company. The Japanese automaker has been struggling with plunging sales in several important markets including India and desperate times calls for desperate measures.
The auto giant recently announced a global job cut to the tune of 12,500 employees. The decision will affect its Indian subsidiary too as Renault-Nissan Alliance is reportedly planning to cut around 1,700 jobs.
To further improve its competitiveness on a global scale, Nissan is planning to cut down 10% of its product portfolio. The slow selling compact cars under Nissan and Datsun brands as well as sports coupes under Nissan and Infiniti brands are likely to face the axe.
Relaunched primarily to cater to markets like India, Russia and South Africa, the Datsun budget car brand failed to create any noteworthy impact in any of its target markets. In India, Nissan took a step back to let Datsun lead the charge but despite bringing comprehensive updates, the Go family of low-cost cars has been continuing to suffer from poor sales.
Datsun India’s entire portfolio (Go, Go+ and Redigo) have been witnessing sustained drop in monthly sales performance so much so that discontinuing the brand and mitigating the losses seems like a sensible move. Even hiring Aamir Khan as brand ambassador did no good to the brand’s sales.
In international markets, especially in the US, small cars like the Versa Note and Sentra may likely be put to rest. Both cars were extremely popular once but the crossover frenzy has rendered their respective segments redundant.
Nissan’s comprehensive lineup of crossovers and SUVs have been very well received all across the globe (save for India) and hence we don’t expect any of them to be axed. Nissan currently retails over 60 nameplates worldwide of which we expect around 10 vehicles to hang up their boots by early 2022.
In addition to the right-sizing of the portfolio, the Japanese company is also planning to cutting down its global production capacity by 10%. The surviving products are expected to be be underpinned by a few number of modular architectures that would be shared with alliance partner Renault as well to improve the benefits of economies of scale.