Nissan to Break Ties with Toyota on Hybrid Technology

• November
• 22

6:34 am Vehicles

Nissan to end ties with Toyota and create its own hybrid technology

A change is afoot at one of Japan’s automotive giants. Nissan has been working in conjunction with Toyota since 2002 to develop a gasoline-electric hybrid system for its redesigned Altima mid-sized sedan. The company didn’t want to go full bore with hybrid technology and agreed to a production run of just 100,000 hybrid Altima sedans that would be sold in only eight states (California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine and New Jersey). Now that Nissan has seen an upswing in the demand of hybrids, it has decided to ditch Toyota’s system for future models and use its own technology in its vehicles.

Nissan’s home-brewed hybrid system will be incorporated into compact cars (presumably the Sentra and Versa in the United States) and will use lithium-ion batteries instead of the nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries used by Toyota, Ford and Honda. The use of lithium-ion batteries will give Nissan faster recharge times and increased energy capacity. Nissan also plans to add a hybrid vehicle to its lineup that can be plugged into a wall outlet in your garage to speed up the charging process. The Daily Yomiri Online reports:

Nissan had not embarked on full-scale mass production of hybrid cars since it wanted to wait and see which types of low-emission cars would come to dominate the market. The maker has released only hybrid minivans on a limited scale, but as hybrid car sales by Toyota and Honda have grown in Japan and the United States, Nissan decided it would lose market share unless it entered the market with its own models.

It wasn’t too long ago that Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn was rather dismissive of hybrid technology. “Hybrid sales account for less than 1 percent of global sales. It is a niche technology. The question is how much the consumer is willing to pay for them, and if they are unsure at $70 a barrel [for oil] then I would be very worried. For now it is a terrible business prospect,” said Ghosn almost exactly a year ago. What a difference a year makes.