The Japanese factory in Tochigi Prefecture is disrupting the production plan for the Ariya crossover due to a number of objective and subjective difficulties, and orders for it have been suspended.
Ariya is Nissan's first electric crossover, which the Japanese company has high hopes for, and is based on the CMF-EV modular platform of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance. The forerunner of the Ariya was the Nissan IMx concept of 2017, the car in serial design was shown in the summer of 2020, orders began to be accepted in 2021.
The pre-commissioning assembly of Ariya crossovers in Japan in Tochigi prefecture began in 2021, mass production was scheduled to start in the summer of 2022, but we did not find information about this significant event on all the main Nissan media resources — it is only clear that production is not shaky no worries: at the end of last spring, US Nissan dealers received a notice to suspend taking orders for Ariya, by the end of summer, Japanese dealers received the same unpleasant message from headquarters.
Nissan's global report for last year does not contain shipment data by model, but statistics on the US market, where manufacturers are required to disclose sales, help to indirectly assess the situation: so there, last year, Ariya sold only 201 units, and all of them were delivered in the fourth quarter . Independent statistics for the first months of this year do not see the Nissan Ariya at close range, from which we can unequivocally conclude that something is wrong with the car.
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The situation around the Nissan Ariya was recently clarified by Reuters, citing anonymous informed sources: according to them, the production plan for the Ariya was reduced by about a third due to production problems. Nissan planned to make more than 9,000 electric crossovers a month in Tochigi, but based on current realities, the plan for March is 6,900 cars, for April — 5,200, for May — 5,400.
Production issues cited by sources include the notorious global shortage of microchips, a delay in deliveries of components from China following a fire at contractor Wuxi Welnew Micro-Electronic in January, and paint problems. In Tochigi, the bodies are painted together with the bumpers, which is very environmentally friendly, but defects occur due to the difference in the properties of metal and plastic. In addition, the Ariya assembly line itself is quite complex, since other, “hydrocarbon” Nissan models also follow it, which is very energy efficient, but requires versatile equipment and creates many technological bottlenecks.
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Nissan expects to resolve all difficulties with the production of Ariya in the coming months, but in general it is already clear that this year the crossover will not be a hit, and next year then it’s time for the model to be restyled – you know, time is running out, competition in the EV segment is getting sharper, new items are coming in abundance, especially from China. Let's hope that Nissan can get its future mainstream electric vehicles into production much faster.