Nissan Aims to Halve New Car Development Time by Adopting Chinese Model

Nissan is looking to reverse its recent struggles by speeding up its new vehicle development process, taking inspiration from the rapid pace seen in the Chinese automotive industry. The company has made shortening the development cycle for new models a key focus of its reform efforts.

According to Kazuyuki Yamaguchi, Nissan's corporate vice president, the company's survival depends on bringing new products to market faster. Through a series of process reforms, the time required to develop a new vehicle from concept to completion has been reduced from 50 months to 37 months. Updates for derivative models now take 30 months, a 40% improvement.

The accelerated pace comes from abandoning a past approach of striving for perfection in every aspect. Yamaguchi stated that previously, the pursuit of optimizing each step often led to prolonged timelines. Now, the focus is on concentrating resources to perfect a vehicle's most crucial selling points.

Design processes have also been reconfigured. Instead of generating multiple design options and undergoing lengthy selection, teams now group different vehicle models into product families that share key hardware. This reduces redundant work from the outset. Digital tools, including AI modeling, digital twins, and virtual reality, are extensively used for validation before physical prototypes are built, and advanced autonomous driving technology allows test vehicles to run overnight.

While Nissan has seen positive results, such as the recent Skyline developed in just 26 months, it still lags behind Chinese automakers who can develop new vehicles in as little as 18 to 24 months. Yamaguchi attributes part of this gap to differing work cultures, noting that Chinese companies can operate on projects 24 hours a day, a pace that is difficult for Japanese companies to match.