Nissan Motor plans to increase exports of vehicles developed in China as it seeks to compete with Chinese automakers in international markets, CEO Ivan Espinosa told CNBC on Wednesday.
The expansion comes as mounting pressure in the world’s largest auto market has prompted Nissan to lower its annual sales forecast for the second time in just a few months.
Espinosa said Nissan intends to quickly expand exports of China-developed vehicles from two models to five, covering 12 regional market clusters in the “very near term.”
The Japanese automaker is addressing China’s increasingly competitive market by designing vehicles specifically for local consumers and drawing on domestic technology, lower costs and shorter development timelines, he said.
“We can defend ourselves from these very aggressive players by using exactly the same elements that they have: speed, cost, and good technology,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
China headwinds
Nissan is contending with softer demand and a faster transition to electric vehicles in China, even as its restructuring program gains traction in the U.S. and Japan.
On Wednesday, Nissan reduced its global sales forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2027 to between 2.97 million and 3 million vehicles, from its previous estimate of 3.15 million. The company left its full-year operating profit and net cash guidance unchanged.
In China, “weaker demand, a faster-than-anticipated shift to [new energy vehicles] and intensifying competition are putting greater pressure on sales than initially anticipated,” Nissan said in a statement.
In August, the company had already lowered its full-year sales forecast from 3.3 million vehicles to 3.15 million.
In October, shares of rival Volvo Cars plunged after the company reported an operating loss, pointing to difficult conditions in China and the U.S.
CEO Håkan Samuelsson told CNBC at the time that Volvo needed a new approach in China, including vehicles tailored to regional markets.
“It’s really a lot about the Chinese market, of course, where the change has come faster than we thought, and really now we can see that selling global cars developed in Europe and China will not work, and then this is affecting all the Western players in China,” Samuelsson said.
Nissan also reported on Wednesday that second-quarter operating profit fell 96% to 2.1 billion yen ($13 million), well below the 54.9 billion yen expected by analysts, according to FactSet.
The decline reflected the loss of lower U.S. emissions-related expenses that had supported earnings during the same period a year earlier, the company said.
Quarterly net revenue increased 8.2% to 3.1 trillion yen, broadly matching consensus estimates.
The results were released after the Tokyo market closed. Nissan shares have fallen 29% since the start of the year.
Espinosa, who has headed Nissan since April 2025, also highlighted progress under a turnaround plan aimed at reducing the company’s global manufacturing footprint and shrinking its workforce by 15%. Roughly 18 months into the program, Nissan has delivered 365 billion yen in savings, Espinosa said.
