Nissan has 15 vehicles which meet the Japanese criteria for low-emission cars and has seen year-on-year sales increase by 30%, chief operating officer Toshiyuki Shiga told a news conference.
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This would be the first monthly increase in sales for 10 months for Japan’s third largest carmaker.
He was speaking at the launch of the NV200 Vanette which went on sale in Japan this week and will reach Europe this autumn and China early next year.
Shiga said Nissan had increased the number of models eligible for the Japanese government’s eco incentives from six to 15 by making engine improvements and launching a major marketing campaign. But he admitted that a lack of a hybrid in its line-up was causing concern, especially from dealers. Honda’s Insight was the best-selling car in Japan in April and Toyota launched its new Prius at the beginning of this week.
Nissan sells a hybrid but only in the US, where the locally-built Altima sedan, about the same size as a European D-segment model, uses Toyota technology.
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By GlobalDataJapan lowered taxes on ‘greener’ vehicles last month in a step the auto industry expects will add 310,000 vehicles in sales in the financial year to March 2010.
Nissan said it was targeting monthly sales of 1,300 NV200s in Japan and global sales of 150,000 units a year.
In addition to the two-seat and five-seat models, the new Vanette comes as a seven-passenger wagon model with three rows of seats, of which two in the back can be folded for use as cargo space.
The van has a 1.6 litre petrol engine and achieves fuel efficiency of 14km per litre (about 42 mpg), qualifying for the new tax breaks introduced by the Japanese government. Retail prices range from JPY1.57m (US$16,400m) to JPY1.90m.
The new Vanette was developed and produced by Nissan unlike the current Vanette, which is produced under an OEM deal with Mazda. Butt’s a long-standing name, dting back at least to the early 1980s, and Nissan has previously produced its own vans under this nameplate.
Production of the NV200 will also start in Barcelona this autumn.
