1988 Nissan 300zx Base Coupe 2-door 3.0l on 2040-cars

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Nissan reveals new Qashqai crossover for Europe

Between the Juke, Rogue, Murano, Xterra, Pathfinder and Armada, Nissan offers a wide variety of crossovers and SUVs in this market. And that's not even counting the trucks, vans and Infiniti crossovers. But in the European market, it all comes down the Qashqai. Not that Nissan doesn't offer other crossovers in Europe, it's just that the Qashqai has, since its introduction in 2007, accounted for the lion's share, with over two million sold globally (of which 1.5 million were in Europe). And now, after teasing it repeatedly, Nissan has introduced the all-new model.
Larger, sleeker, more advanced, more comfortable and more environmentally friendly than the model it replaces, the new Qashqai is designed in Europe, for Europe, and hits the market at the start of the new year. It's the first European model to be based on Renault-Nissan's new Common Alliance Platform that will eventually encompass three Nissan models and 11 Renaults built in locations around the world.
An array of gasoline and diesel engines, ranging from 110 to 150 horsepower, will be available in two- or four-wheel drive configurations, with either a six-speed manual or the type of continuously variable transmission which Nissan champions.

Nissan sees its EV sales surging to 1 million annually by 2022

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Nissan announced plans to sell 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) annually by 2022, a six-fold jump from what it sold last year, and said it had no plans to stop testing its self-driving cars on public roads, calling them safe. Japan's No. 2 automaker and its rivals are planning to crank up development and production of electric cars in response to tightening emissions regulations around the world, even as demand for such vehicles remains limited due to their high cost and limited charging infrastructure. Launched as the world's first mass-market all-battery EV in 2010, Nissan's Leaf compact hatchback is the world's best-selling EV, though sales have been just around 300,000 units in its lifetime. The company now plans to focus its lower-emissions lineup on all-battery and gasoline-hybrid EVs rather than costlier technologies including plug-in hybrids. Nissan said on Friday it would develop eight new all-battery EVs over the next five years, including four models for China. Its luxury Infiniti brand would begin carrying new electric models from 2021, it added. Through 2022, vehicles powered by its "e-Power" gasoline-hybrid technology would likely comprise the majority of Nissan's electric line-up, it said. Such vehicles use gasoline to power the car's motor, requiring a much smaller battery than EVs and therefore are less expensive to produce. "The heart of our strategy in terms of electrification is battery EVs and e-Power technology," Nissan Chief Planning Officer Philippe Klein told reporters at a briefing. Concerns about EV battery costs and components have prompted many automakers to develop a variety of lower emissions technologies, but Klein said that Nissan would largely forego plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell technologies, given their low cost-performance at the moment. In 2017, Nissan sold 163,000 electric vehicles globally. Nissan and its automaking partners, Renault and Mitsubishi, together plan to launch 17 electric models as part of their strategy to achieve annual vehicle sales totaling 14 million units by 2022, compared with 10.6 million units in 2017. Self-driving tests to continue Automakers and technology companies are facing mounting pressure to prove that their automated driving functions under development are safe to use on public roads following a fatal accident involving a self-driving car operated by Uber Technologies [UBER.UL] in the United States earlier this week.

The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.