Nissan to Spend $17.6 bln Over 5 years in Electrification Push

Nissan said Monday it planned to spend $17.6 billion over the next five years as part of a plan to add 20 new battery-powered vehicles to its lineup. The company plans to recapture some of the prominence it formerly held in the electric-vehicle race after its pioneering introduction of the Leaf EV more than a decade ago.

Investors have given a boost to the share prices of car companies that are betting big on EVs, including relative newcomers such as Tesla Inc. TSLA, -3.05%,  and industry stalwarts like Ford Motor Co.  F, -2.47% and Volkswagen AG VOW, -3.58%. Nissan said some of those 20 new vehicles would be purely battery-powered, like the Leaf, while others would be gasoline-electric hybrids. It didn’t say what proportion would be pure electric vehicles.

Nissan said that by 2030, half of its vehicles sold would be powered at least partly by batteries. That matches similar targets made by rivals in the U.S. and Europe earlier this year.Last year, only around 10 percent of Nissan global sales were EVs or hybrids, and the firm said the new target would help it achieve carbon neutrality across the lifecycle of its products by 2050.

Nissan has been battered by a series of problems in recent years, ranging from weak demand even before the pandemic, to the fallout from the arrest and subsequent escape of former boss Carlos Ghosn. After falling behind rivals during the pandemic, it has begun clawing back performance, tripling its full-year net profit forecast earlier this month despite the impact of a global chip shortage