Nissan to invest $17.6 billion over next five years to ramp up electric vehicle offering

Japanese automotive giant Nissan is to invest 2 trillion yen (around $17.6 billion) over the next five years to speed up the electrification of its product line.

Nissan said on Monday it would aim to roll out 23 new electrified models by 2030, 15 of which will be fully electric.

It is targeting a 50% electrification mix for its Nissan and Infiniti brands by the end of the decade.

On the battery front, the firm is planning to introduce all-solid-state batteries, or ASSB, to the market by 2028. A pilot ASSB facility in the Japanese city of Yokohama will be readied “as early as fiscal year 2024”, Nissan said.

In a speech outlining the plans, Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said his company was focusing on the in-house development of ASSB.

“With this, we’ll be able to double the energy density versus current lithium-ion batteries,” he said. “With batteries made smaller and thinner, we can offer flexible layout with more dynamic performance, expanding to larger segments like pick up trucks.”

Nissan is one of several well-known companies pursuing an electrification strategy. In March, Volvo Cars said it planned to become a “fully electric car company” by the year 2030. Elsewhere, BMW Group has said it wants fully electric vehicles to represent at least 50% of its deliveries by 2030.

It comes at a time when major economies around the world are attempting to reduce the environmental footprint of transportation.

The U.K., for example, wants to stop the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars and vans by 2030. It will require, from 2035, all new cars and vans to have zero tailpipe emissions.

Elsewhere, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is targeting a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions from cars and vans by 2035.

Earlier this month, signatories to a declaration at the COP26 climate change summit said they would “work towards all sales of new cars and vans being zero emission globally by 2040, and by no later than 2035 in leading markets.”

While the U.S., China and carmakers including Volkswagen, Toyota and Nissan were absent from the declaration, signatories did include the U.K., Indian and Canadian governments and automotive firms such as Ford, General Motors and Volvo Cars.

Speaking to CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick on Monday morning, Nissan’s Uchida said his company needed to be “equipped and ready [for] how the market will evolve further in terms of … electrification.”

On charging, Uchida stressed the importance of collaboration. “We are focusing, not only [at] … Nissan but also in the Alliance [on] how we can further … contribute to establish the infrastructure in terms of the charging stations.”

Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi is an automotive alliance that was established in 1999. Mitsubishi joined the strategic partnership in 2016.