Nissan wants to save fuel – that is the Japanese automaker’s long-term plan. Its strategy is to reduce the weight of all its vehicles by up to 15^th percent and by 2015, it should have accomplished its mission. This would give way for a better fuel economy and so this is Nissan’s way of winning customers.

What Nissan Motor Corporation plans to do is to increase the use of lighter materials such as plastic fiber, magnesium alloys, and aluminum for its Nissan parts. So, instead of using steel to ake its vehicles with, Executive Vice President of Nissan, Mitsuhiko Yamashita, said that it aims to use these lighter materials instead.

In US, the largest auto market, a gallon of gasoline is already selling at $3, making the cost of operation of vehicles increase. Thus, a lot of automakers, Nissan included, are producing more fuel efficient vehicles in order to combat this issue and at the same time, do not lose customers. Nissan’s plan of reducing the weight of its vehicles and eventually providing for a better fuel economy will also help it in meeting the requirements of fuel efficiency of US, Japan, and other auto markets which will eventually become more stringent.

Yamashita said, “Improving our cars’ fuel efficiency will boost our competitiveness as the price of oil surges. We want to comply with new rules before governments put them into practice.”

Also, by fiscal year 2015, Japan should have implemented its requirement for automakers to improve the fuel efficiency of their passenger cars by up to 23.5 percent. The United States has also made its move as President Goerge W. Bush has already signed a law last December that mandates a 40 percent increase in car and light-truck fuel economy by the year 2020. Thus, by that time, new models should already be able to average 35 miles per gallon of fuel.

2010 should also be the year that Nissan introduces its own gasoline-electric vehicle which will be powered by lithium-ion batteries and will be sold under the Infiniti brand.

Yamashita said, “”Infiniti has better odds.” This is because this model has the front engine and rear drive system which work well with the hybrid technology of Nissan.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under nissan news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.