One year after assuming the role of CEO, Ivan Espinoza has outlined Nissan's ambitious strategy to claw back from the brink of collapse. When Espinoza took the top job at Japan's second-largest automaker last year, Nissan was in significant distress. The company faced a staggering 40 percent decline in worldwide sales compared to eight years prior, coupled with a substantial $4.5 billion loss for the 2024 financial year. A proposed merger with Honda had fallen through, and Nissan's market valuation was estimated to be a mere four percent of its long-standing rival, Toyota, with a senior executive anonymously suggesting the company had only 12 to 14 months left to survive.

The enormity of the task ahead was not lost on Espinoza, a 22-year Nissan veteran who previously served as chief planning officer. His initial plan, dubbed the 'Re:Nissan' turnaround strategy, targeted $3.4 billion in cost reductions. This involved drastic measures such as closing seven of Nissan's seventeen factories globally, streamlining its total number of vehicle platforms from thirteen to seven, and implementing a 15 percent workforce reduction. Furthermore, all work on new models scheduled for launch after 2026 was temporarily halted, with reports indicating that 3,000 staff were redirected to focus on reducing parts complexity and redundancy by an ambitious 70 percent.

Despite a challenging year, Nissan has managed to endure. Espinoza reports that the Re:Nissan strategy has already yielded significant results, cutting fixed costs by $1.3 billion and variable costs by an additional $350 million. While global sales remain slow—Nissan concluded 2025 with 3.15 million vehicles sold worldwide, a notable decrease from the 5.77 million sold in 2017—Espinoza believes the company has now established a stable foundation for future growth. His immediate target is to achieve worldwide sales of 3.3 million vehicles by the end of the current year, describing this growth as