Gupta outlined the road map while detailing new plans to streamline EV engineering.
Nissan will simplify powertrain designs and consolidate platforms to cut cost and weight.
Today’s more complex product planning matrix, for example, covers a narrow body platform and wide body platform with two battery size types and a standard or premium suspension.
The result is 16 possible variants, for the U.S., Europe and China.
In the future example Gupta cited, there will be only one platform for those regions, two batteries and one premium suspension. The streamlined offerings result in only three variants.
Today’s Qashqai crossover, Juke crossover and Leaf EV, for instance, all ride on different platforms. But from the next generation, they will share the CMF-EV architecture, he said.
The Renault-Nissan alliance has more than 100 models, 60 percent of which share platforms. From 2026, there will be fewer than 90 models, 80 percent of which will ride on common platforms.
The same simplification will apply to powertrain diversity.
In the 2020 fiscal year, Nissan had 49 powertains, covering four electrified and 45 internal-combustion offerings. That will shrink to 27 powertrains in 2026, with four electrified options and 23 engines. By 2030, it will be whittled to three electrified and 16 fuel-burning ones.
Gupta said Nissan will reduce not only its ICE options but also its electric ones through greater commonization for better economies of scale and more efficient use of R&D funds.
Software focus
As part of Nissan’s strategy update, Gupta said the company will also speed its shift to software-defined vehicles. That will include deriving revenue from in-vehicle services in the U.S. and European markets from the fiscal year starting April 1.
“We need to shift from products only to products plus services,” Gupta said.
Nissan will also expand the functionality and frequency of over-the-air vehicle software updates. Future updates, in the later 2020s, will happen as often as every three months and cover such systems as autonomous driving and electrified powertrain settings.
From 2025, Gupta said, software running key mobility technologies inside the car will be 100 percent designed and coded by Nissan. Key systems covered will include Nissan’s ProPilot automated driving setup, energy management and mobility services. The company has 4,000 software engineers, both employees and contractors, working on the push.
Gupta promised that the billions of dollars Nissan has plowed into the initiatives in recent years will start paying off in 2025. Said Gupta: “Now we are getting ready for the harvesting.”