The merger talks between Nissan and Honda appeared to be dead, but Nissan just met one of Honda’s seemingly unrealistic demands for merger talks to proceed. Effective April 1st, 2025, Ivan Espinosa, the current Chief Planning Officer of Nissan, will succeed Makoto Uchida as CEO.
Ivan Espinosa
This news comes after Honda made two lofty demands for merger negotiations to continue. One was that Uchida must be removed as CEO and the other was that Nissan would be a subsidiary of Honda. Additionally, Honda asked its rival to scrap its e-Power hybrid system that it’s planning to bring to the U.S. in 2027. It’s unclear whether these merger talks will resume or if the change in leadership was motivated by an attempt to get the company on a path to growth on its own.
“Given that I am unable to gain the confidence of some of our employees and that the board made a request, I concluded that transitioning to the new top management and making a fresh start will be in the best interest of Nissan,” outgoing CEO Uchida said, according to Automotive News. “I deeply regret that I had to pass the baton to my successor in these circumstances.”
Makoto Uchida
Ivan Espinosa’s career with the Japanese automaker dates back to 2003. He’s been involved in global product planning since 2010 and has been the Chief Planning Officer since April 2024. “Espinosa is still in his 40s and full of energy,” Uchida said of his replacement. “He’s also a real car guy.”
Espinosa is in the unenviable position of getting Nissan on track after a bad year for the company. It reported back-to-back quarterly net losses for Q3 and Q4 2024, downgrading the full fiscal-year outlook to a net loss. The automaker downgraded its annual global sales forecast to 3.4 million on an operating profit margin of just one percent.
“I’m really excited to continue Uchida san’s work to help Nissan shine again,” Espinosa said. “I sincerely believe that Nissan has so much more potential than what we are seeing today.” The automaker’s next CEO sounds confident when he says he will bring “stability and growth back to the company.”
Comments
think is too many car makers doing all the same, but none do a beautiful sedan for the majority budget
Your right but I’m hard pressed to blame the Manufacturers for this. Remember it was the buying public that stopped buying sedans and said we want SUV’s, not the manufacturers. They have to have a specific take rate of the sedan before its worth the millions in engineering, tooling, and production. Law Enforcement is a perfect example with the Crown dying after LE said we need more room.
I understand mergers are going to happen more frequently as the industry experiences dramatic changes, but Nissan isn’t doing too well. It’s going to take monumental effort to turn them around, and I’m not sure Honda realizes how daunting this will be now.
Offer incentives on the pathfinder and frontier and move all units. Price sells cars, and sitting around waiting for high profit margins I do believe is how Ferrari got bought out by fiat.