Fourteen years after the Leaf, what’s next for Nissan?
The unveiling of 2025 models kicks off this week at the Japan Mobility Show (formerly the Tokyo Motor Show), where companies like Toyota are already hyping next-generation products like swappable hydrogen fuel-cell cartridges.
It will be a crucial week for Nissan in particular, as its fans and critics watch for signs the company will reinvigorate its sleepy lineup of EVs. It’s made seemingly little progress since last year’s promise to introduce 27 electrified vehicle models by 2030.
The venerable automaker saw global sales fall about 5.5 per cent in August, marking a fifth month of decline after it cut its profit outlook in July, citing “aging products and market momentum towards hybrid vehicles.”
It’s sometimes hard to believe we’re talking about the maker of the Leaf—a product that by wide consensus set an EV industry standard. If Nissan had built on that success, what would its outlook be today?
Edmunds proclaimed the 2011 Leaf the first “real (and realistically priced)” EV, while CNET called it “the first mass production electric car,” comparing it to the Ford Model T as “the herald of a new era in automobiles, which could profoundly affect the way we drive.” This at a time when automakers from General Motors to Tesla were struggling to stay afloat.
“All of these things that are fairly common in most EV launches were things that Nissan did first with the Leaf,” said Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility. She cites early Nissan Leaf features such as navigation to charging locations and driving directions that note how much charge the car will have left throughout the trip.
Carlos Ghosn, then the Nissan chairman and CEO, was a major advocate for EV technology, and his dramatic downfall has certainly been a distraction for the company. Nissan’s reputation has also suffered in Canada, where some Leaf owners struggled to get their batteries fixed and replaced; and in the U.S., where it failed to qualify the Leaf for domestic manufacturing incentives.
While Nissan treaded water, Chinese EV makers took the world by storm, achieving major breakthroughs in affordable battery technology.
“They let a lead go a bit in not updating Leaf for quite a while, and then let the competition get ahead of them,” said Brinley.
Earlier this year, Nissan pledged to turn things around with “The Arc,” a two-part business plan the automaker said will increase sales by one million units and push its operating profit margin above six per cent by the end of its 2026 fiscal year. With the financial breathing room, it plans to launch 30 new models over the next three years, including seven in the U.S. and Canada by the end of fiscal 2026.
There have been some signs of new growth: This week, Nissan launched a new app for its Ariya EV owners, opening the vehicle to Tesla Superchargers. And earlier this month, it joined BMW, Ford and Honda in the ChargeScape network.
While third-quarter sales of the Leaf in Canada fell nearly 45 per cent year over year, the automaker’s overall sales are up nearly 14 per cent nationwide.
Still, Kevin Mixer, a senior director at research and consulting firm Gartner, said Nissan’s reputation as an innovator needs even more of a reboot than other legacy automakers like Ferrari, Cadillac, Ford, Volvo or Toyota—companies that have promoted their innovations while maintaining associations with concepts like speed, luxury, “toughness,” safety or reliability. Introducing features this winter like modern infotainment, battery-cooling technologies and hybrid drivetrains could be a start for Nissan, he said.
Mixer credits the company with some developmental spadework. “It’s doing a lot of work around AI. It’s doing a lot of work around getting the software to find vehicles and the new platforms.” he said. But the question on his mind—and of many watching this week in Tokyo—is:
“What is that anchor product that you can go to market with, that people can relate to?”
This is Shift. A special thanks this week to my colleague Aimée Look, who rounded up the news and curated your top reads.
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