Ponz Pandikuthira, VP, Chief Planning and Product Officer for Nissan Americas, acknowledged it openly this week: Nissan is looking for new partnerships.
The executive indicated that Nissan's current catalog has three sections. There’s the high-volume sales portion with vehicles like the Rogue and Pathfinder. Then we have what Nissan considers the core of the brand, with more specific products like the LEAF and the Z. And the last is produces growing out of partnerships with other automakers, which Nissan is now increasingly open to.
Auto123 learned of Nissan’s growing interest in collaborations during a presentation organized by Nissan as part of the launch this week of the new Rogue PHEV. Directly derived from the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, this Rogue PHEV is the result of just such a collaboration, in this case a partnership with another Japanese automaker.
A new pickup truck from Nissan?
While Pandikuthira expressed great openness to potential partnerships, he chose to refrain from sharing any specifics regarding Nissan’s plans. He did mention that possibilities exist in connection with a car, a sport utility vehicle and a pickup truck.
In this regard, let us remember that Nissan currently markets the Frontier mid-size pickup, but that it no longer offers a full-size pickup since the discontinuation of the Titan. Could a new partnership give rise to a new full-size pickup to compete with the Ford F-Series, Chevrolet Silverado, GMC Sierra, and Toyota Tundra? That doesn’t seem impossible.
Equally possible would be a new-generation Frontier arising from a partnership. Or, Nissan could be tempted to enter the compact pickup market with a rival to the popular Ford Maverick. We’re in the realm of pure speculation here, but none of these scenarios are far-fetched.
As for that Nissan Rogue PHEV, which draws its technology from Mitsubishi and results from a partnership between the Japanese firms, the automaker makes clear it intends to develop that type of agreement to generate other new products.