Nissan says it could reach its goal of capturing 10 percent of the US market much earlier than expected, as early as spring of 2017.
Currently, Nissan and Infiniti hold 8.4 percent of the American market, according to Automotive News, but the double-digit barrier was once thought to be hard to crack, said Nissan North America Chairman Jose Munoz, but the issue was one of capacity.
However, speaking at Nissan’s Yokohama headquarters on Friday, Munoz introduced a plan to open that bottleneck in order to reach the target by March 31, 2017. The blueprint entails opening production capacity at Nissan’s plants in the US, South Korea, Japan and Mexico.
The weak yen has made production in Japan profitable again, while Mexico factories have been freed to send their cars northward thanks to new plants in Brazil serving South America. Nissan also recently broke ground at a new Mexican plant that will produce Infiniti models. Meanwhile, the 648,000-strong factory in Smyrna, Tennessee is the highest capacity plant in the US.
Nissan’s Sentra, Pathfinder, and popular Rogue crossover are three US-bound models that have Munoz says are currently being under-produced.
In addition, Munoz believes that US profit margins can be raised to at least 8 percent, up from its current 5.6. In part, this will come from high-margin models such as the just-released Murano upcoming Maxima.
Leave a Reply