Nissan has cut its global sales forecast for the second time this fiscal year and conceded it will not reach three million vehicles. The revised guidance is 2.97 to 3.0 million units for the year to March, about 150,000 lower than the previous target. On current trends the Japanese group would post its weakest full-year global volume in roughly a quarter of a century.
Deliveries in the first nine months of 2026 totalled 2,182,362 vehicles, down 9.3 per cent year on year. Holding three million for the calendar year would require about 272,500 units a month in the fourth quarter, some 10 per cent above September’s run rate. Nissan last sold fewer than three million cars in a calendar year in 2003.
China accounts for more than half the fall
China is Nissan’s second-largest market and the source of more than half its global decline. Sales there are down 32 per cent this year, including a 62 per cent collapse in September alone. Chief financial officer George Leondis told an earnings call on 11 November that Chinese demand is highly volatile and hard to forecast.
For the fiscal year, Nissan now guides China volume at 370,000 to 400,000 vehicles, against 653,000 a year earlier, a decline of up to 43 per cent. The peak was 1.5 million units in 2018.
Michael Dunne, chief executive of Dunne Insights, told Automotive News that Nissan’s contraction is among the most dramatic of any foreign carmaker operating in China, and that a market which was once Nissan’s largest single market has lost about one million units.
Dunne’s diagnosis is the same one that applies across the industry. Nissan underestimated the speed of China’s electrification after 2020, and by the time it fielded competitive electric models, Chinese buyers had decided its software and specification were behind. Chinese brands are now also pushing into Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, markets where Nissan had structural advantages.
The United States is carrying the plan
Nine-month volume fell 15 per cent in Canada and 9 per cent in Europe. In the United States, deliveries edged up 0.6 per cent to 716,283 while retail orders rose 8.1 per cent to 557,568, as Nissan reduced low-margin fleet volume and relied on locally built crossovers to hold margin.
Nissan now expects North American volume to rise 4.2 per cent to 1.35 million this fiscal year, above its August forecast of 1.32 million and last year’s 1.29 million. Christian Meunier, chairman of Nissan Americas, called the US the company’s base of operations.
The group maintained its full-year operating profit guidance of USD 1.3 billion, supported by cost reduction, better mix and improving performance outside China. That is the shape of the whole turnround now. Nissan is no longer trying to grow its way back. It is trying to earn the same money on fewer cars.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Gasgoo report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://auto.gasgoo.com/news/202611/12I70477747C109.shtml.