Nissan to debut 8 new EVs by 2022
It also hopes to sell 1 million electrified vehicles per year in that same timeframe.
Automakers like throwing around vague ideas for what they plan to do in the future, but Nissan's plans for 2022 are more concrete than most.
Nissan on Friday unveiled its "M.O.V.E. to 2022" plan, which lays out how the company plans to shift its strategy over the next four years. The most interesting parts of the plan are Nissan's goal to launch eight new battery-electric cars and equip 20 models in 20 markets with semiautonomous driving tech in that time.
Electrification is arguably the most important part. In addition to the eight new EVs, which Nissan didn't explain in great detail, the company also wants to introduce multiple EVs in China through joint ventures. These include a C-segment car (e.g. Golf, Civic) and an affordable A-segment car (e.g. Fiat 500, VW Up). Its Infiniti luxury brand also hopes to electrify all new vehicles starting in 2021.
If the production IMx looks anywhere near this cool, I'll be all over it. Crossovers don't have to be lame.
One bit of specificity from its EV plans involves a new crossover that will be sold globally. This EV SUV will be based on the Nissan IMx from the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show, which packed 429 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque in concept form.
The end goal there is to sell approximately 1 million electrified vehicles every year by 2022. To give you a point of comparison, Nissan sold about 4.1 million vehicles globally between April and December of last year, so that goal represents a sizable chunk of its sales.
When it comes to autonomy, Nissan has a tech called ProPilot Assist, which holds a vehicle in a single lane on the highway and is capable of matching speed with traffic. It's low on the SAE autonomy scale (Level 2), but it still reduces the tedium of long highway slogs. It hopes to have ProPilot on 20 different vehicles in 20 different markets by 2022.
In the future, Nissan will expand ProPilot to work across multiple lanes and "manage vehicle destinations," although it's unclear what that means. ProPilot's beefing-up will kick off within a year, with a pilot program in Japan.
Vehicles are usually developed on five-year schedules, so considering that 2022 is within that window, odds are that Nissan's plan is more than just talk at this point. We'll see how it unfolds over the next few years.
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