Nissan’s huge efforts to sell more cars over the last decade did the job of moving more metal, but they hurt the company in the long run, its new CEO says. Without pulling any punches, in a recent interview he said that aggressively pursuing the rental car market boosted its share, but those sales came with big discounts and big damage to the company’s image. Now he wants to change it.
Sales At All Costs…Came With A Hefty Cost
“Before, it was like, okay, we want volume, volume, volume,” Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa told Reuters in an interview, describing the company’s actions under previous leadership. “This is not a good way of operating a car company,” he added.
The move to sell as many cars (and trucks and SUVs) as possible didn’t even work all that well. While Nissan was offering massive discounts and filling up rental car lots, its market share continued to shrink from around 9% a decade ago to 6% today. In outright numbers, Nissan had a modern-day peak at 1.6 million vehicles in 2017 and sold just 913,000 last year. The low point was 2022, when it sold just 730,000.
Now Espinosa wants healthy growth. The company is bragging about quality instead of low price, and its JD Power numbers are improving.
The company has just announced its 16th consecutive month of retail sales growth – sales to people instead of fleets – and Nissan says it is the “fastest-growing mainstream brand” in the US. But fleet sales grew in the last quarter as well. With the number up from 45,661 in Q2 2025 to 52,831 in the same period this year, the growth was actually slightly higher than on the retail side.
CEO Expects New Models To Boost Brand Image
Espinosa is hoping that the company’s new models will help with his efforts to revitalize the brand’s image. None of the new models have yet been revealed, but the first one – a hybrid version of the Rogue SUV – should go on sale this year. The new CEO says Nissan has missed out on hybrids, which have surged massively in popularity over the last decade. Nissan has not offered a hybrid in the US since the 2011 Altima sedan, and it introduced its first PHEV, a model badged as a Rogue, last year.
After the new Rogue, more models are coming, including a new body-on-frame Xterra, powered by a V6 or V6 hybrid. We’ve already driven the new Nissan Rogue Hybrid in prototype form, where the e-Power system delivers an experience that’s more like an EV than a traditional hybrid, but without the plug.
Nissan has also been slashing costs across the world, closing factories and discontinuing less popular models including the subcompact Versa. That plan is already showing results for the bottom line, with the company returning to profit. Espinosa said Nissan was “beyond recovery and are entering a phase of growth.”
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