Nissan outlines future sustainability plan
BY ROBBIE WALLIS | 8th Jun 2018
NISSAN has laid bare its future sustainability plan up until the 2022 financial year with a focus on environmental, social and governance issues – the first time the brand has detailed such a wide-ranging strategy.
The Japanese car-maker launched its ongoing Green Program environmental action plan in 2001 with a long-term goal towards 2050, and the newly announced five-year sustainability plan aims to ensure the projections remain on track as it nears the halfway point.
The brand has identified a number of areas of improvement for environmental initiatives, including decreasing CO2 emissions from new vehicles by 40 per cent from 2000 levels by 2022, done in part by increasing electrification.
Nissan is aiming for one million annual sales of vehicles either with full-EV or hybrid electric by the end of the 2022, and will increase the use of vehicle-to-everything communication systems to improve energy management.
The EV rollout, dubbed ‘MOVE to 2022’, will be spearheaded by the Leaf EV as well as a number of models underpinned by the brand’s ePower drivetrain, which uses a small-capacity petrol engine to charge the battery that drives the vehicle.
An affordable EV will also be developed for the Chinese market, through a joint-venture partnership with Chinese Dongfeng motor group, while Nissan’s premium brand, Infiniti, will also receive more electrified models.
A 30 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions from production and corporate activities compared to 2005 is also targeted, while recycling of new materials aims to increase to 70 per cent, from promoting a circular economy of reused and recycled lithium-ion batteries in EVs.
In addition, reducing volatile organic compounds in vehicle production processes and reducing water consumption in global production by 21 per cent compared to 2010 are other environmental goals outlined by the Japanese brand.
Nissan is also rumoured to have stopped development of new diesel engines.
For social initiatives, Nissan’s main goal is to reduce the number of fatalities in Nissan vehicles to zero, which can be helped by increasing the number of vehicles offered with the brand’s ProPilot autonomous software, namely to 20 vehicles in 20 markets by 2022.
Increasing gender diversity will be done by upping the proportion of female managers to 16 per cent globally and 13 per cent in Japan by April 2023, while training on diversity and supporting diverse work styles will also be encouraged.
Plans to improve governance will be enacted by encouraging consistent communication in the workplace, promoting opportunities for employees’ voices to be heard and issues to be resolved in an effective manner, and enhancing corporate governance by appointing independent directors as one-third of the board of directors.
Nissan senior vice president and chief sustainability officer Hitoshi Kawaguchi said the plan will help keep Nissan on track with its long-term goals.
“Nissan Sustainability 2022 is fully aligned with our midterm objectives of delivering steady growth and leading the automotive industry's technology evolution,” he said.
“We believe sustainable mobility will help achieve a world with zero emissions and zero fatalities.
“Our plan, further enhanced by our efforts to be a truly diverse and inclusive company, will make an important contribution to that effort.”
