Nissan Motor Co.’s new CEO and management team have inherited a financially struggling company with too much global production capacity and an aging lineup in a competitive market place, automotive experts say.
While resolving those issues won’t be easy, a fresh perspective may be the right approach to spark a turnaround.
Selecting Chief Planning Officer Ivan Espinosa, a more than two decade company veteran, to lead the company following the ousting of embattled CEO Makoto Uchida, was an interesting choice to Stephanie Brinley, S&P Global Mobility associate director of AutoIntelligence.
Automakers who select a new CEO from within traditionally tap someone with either a finance or engineering background, she said in an interview with Automotive Dive.
“It’s usually not product planning,” she said. “That’ll be interesting because I think that the product and how you go to market has to be one of the things Nissan needs to work on.”
Nissan has struggled with sluggish sales, which has led to other cost-cutting moves, including scaling back global production, eliminating 9,000 jobs and buyouts for U.S. production workers. In addition, the automaker’s recent failed merger with Honda Motor Co. led to speculation that Uchida would likely be replaced.
Nissan is now working on its turnaround strategy and passed the baton to a new leadership to see it through, Brinley said.
“So you’ve eliminated the distraction of knowing that you’re going to go from one CEO to another,” she said. “Now the new CEO may do it entirely differently from what the previous CEO might have done, but you know, the company needs to get to stronger profitability.”
Adam Bernard, founder and principal of AutoPerspectives, said Nissan’s priorities remain unchanged. Seeking new revenue streams, financial discipline, developing a resilient supply chain, and producing a balanced electric and gas vehicle lineup are among the chief issues for the automaker, he said.
“Now it’s a matter of executing, which you could argue was the previous CEO’s goal,” said Bernard, who also is president of the Society of Automotive Analysts. “But maybe the right team wasn’t quite in place and some fresh blood was needed.”
The appointment of new executives to oversee manufacturing, strategy and technology suggests there was dissatisfaction with how those functions were operating, Bernard said.
Espinosa’s background reflects that many of his previous roles within Nissan were focused on strategy.
“As the media has noted, Espinosa appears to be a ‘car guy,’” Bernard said. “His background in marketing and engineering makes him a pretty well-rounded executive.”
Though Espinosa’s appointment seems well received among industry experts, he and the company’s other new executive leaders face headwinds.
Bernard said Espinosa may need to make significant organizational changes to lead the company back to profitability.
“Perhaps the previous CEO wasn’t willing to make those sorts of changes, which is one reason why he’s out,” he said.
Nissan’s new leaders also have the added hurdle of coping with a cooling global sales market and an uncertain business environment sparked by Trump administration tariffs on raw materials, including steel, aluminum and vehicles entering the U.S. from Mexico and Canada.
What makes Nissan’s turnaround more challenging is its problems are amplified by the fact “they need to do this, all within the conditions of the current tariff situation,” Brinley said.
