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Nissan has taken the extraordinary step of addressing speculation the company is teetering on the verge of closing down globally.
Outlining specific details of its Australian-market strategy that has been nearly 12 months in the making, Nissan Oceania Vice President and Managing Director, Andrew Humberstone, announced the brand is going nowhere but up.
And, in a refreshing change for a CEO, he seems to have the receipts to prove it.
“To set the record straight so to speak, number one, we’re here to stay, Nissan as a brand is here to stay, and there is no question of that,” Humberstone told the Australian media at the launch of the facelifted Qashqai in Melbourne.
“(Secondly) we are launching exceptionally good and new products, like the Qashqai.
“Thirdly, we’re putting our words into action… by really focussing on customers, customer satisfaction, the customer experience, and putting our Australian customers first, with Australia’s only 10-year/300,000km warranty program, which is best in class.”
The depth and breadth of the conditional new warranty, which requires continual servicing at a Nissan dealer to activate it from beyond the standard five-year/unlimited kilometre scheme, also includes roadside assistance and – shockingly – is backdated to, as well as automatically transferable on, all new vehicles purchased and serviced at Nissan from January 1, 2021.
Furthermore, a published capped-price servicing scheme promises to save hundreds and even thousands of dollars over its five-year duration compared to last year's standard pricing.
According to the UK-born industry veteran, achieving the latter is very expensive and required incredibly difficult and protracted negotiation with the Nissan Motor Corporation (NMC) head office in Japan.
But making a big splash, with a unique customer-centric proposition, was deemed necessary to grab consumers’ attention, win back their trust and bring in fresh buyers as well as lapsed ones back into the fold.
Humberstone also added that all of these strategies were a Nissan Australia initiative, meaning they are now rolling out whether the merger with Honda happens or not. More on that later on.
Arriving in Australia early last year after helping debt-ridden Nissan in Britain and Europe turn around, Humberstone said that, from a global perspective, NMC is also shaking things up by delivering more vehicles consumers actually want to buy, faster and sooner.
One of the biggest is slashing the time it takes for an all-new Nissan model to go from conception to market, which was averaging nearly five years.
“We’re looking at reducing development time of product in terms of lead times from 55 months to 30 months,” Humberstone revealed.
“This is a significant increase in the effect in the design, production and introduction of new product processes.”
What this means essentially, and this is a nod to the success of China’s start-up brands like BYD, is that new vehicles will be designed and engineered more quickly.
This is due mainly to the adoption of electrification and software-derived vehicle architectures, making them both more up-to-date and in-tune with ever-changing consumer demands, while also allowing the company to pivot more quickly if required.
“We’re working with incredible speed to really implement and turn around our action plan and really focus on recovery,” Humberstone elaborated.
“There are two ways: product driven-strategies and production-driven strategies. And those two components are the only way you should drive any business.
“We’re focusing our business around profitability and sustainable growth, and there are a number of reasons and methodologies we can adopt and have adopted to do that.
“So, our approach is really around ‘right-sizing’ the business, which is an obvious statement to make, but one that is not really necessarily implemented across many businesses.”
Humberstone acknowledges stagnant and even neglectful product development over the past decade or so has significantly hurt Nissan worldwide, allowing rivals to overtake the brand in areas where it actually used to innovate, as the old advertising slogan once proudly proclaimed.
These include in electric vehicles (EVs), when the original Leaf of 2010 was the world’s first modern mass-production, and ultimately the all-time bestselling, EV, until Tesla’s Model 3 came along; in SUVs, with former trailblazers like the first X-Trail, Murano, Qashqai and Juke, as well as in pick-ups with earlier generations of the Navara and related utes.
“Obviously growing revenue is through strong product offensive,” Humberstone believes.
“I don’t believe you can save your way out of a crisis. You have to spend your way out. We’re seeing this across the entire automotive industry, so we’re certainly not alone in managing all of these challenges.”
Which brings us back to the pending Honda deal.
Humberstone acknowledges that, should it go through, the proposed alliance will lead to even greater changes and opportunities for Nissan.
“You have all seen our recent MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) signed with Honda,” he said.
“This has the potential, dare I say, to shape our future, in terms of product, design and shared technologies, and united our strengths for both companies so we can deliver unparalleled value to customers worldwide.
“And we’re acting on this potential opportunity with urgency, with a view to expediting as quickly as we can, and we aim to conclude this study by the end of the Japanese summer (September, 2025).”
Whatever happens with Honda, Humberstone is adamant that Nissan in Australia is healthier than what many of the international reports of doom and gloom imply.
To that end, he cites the brand as this country’s third-largest automotive employer with over 600 employees, with the fifth-largest dealer network that’s backed by “massive” logistics infrastructure to ensure timely delivery and parts distribution.
Nissan is also justifiably proud of its casting plant in Melbourne, manufacturing some 1.2 million components for export around the globe.
“It goes without saying that Australia is a really an important market for us,” he concluded.
“We continue to invest in the right products for local customers. We have 11 new product events and four new products… within our short-term initiatives. We’re talking about the new Navara, the new Patrol, the new Ariya and the new Leaf.
“We are really excited to share those with you and obviously improve our market.”
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