Nissan gives up on combustion engines

Nissan has reportedly pulled the plug on almost all future development of petrol and diesel engines in its global markets – with the notable exception of the US – as it switches its resources to rolling out pure-electric cars.

The first Japanese car-maker to abandon petrol and diesel development, Nissan has already stopped investing in combustion engines for the European market, according to Nikkei.

Only limited development of petrol engines will continue in the US, the newswire reports, as they're mainly used in pick-up trucks where strong demand is expected to continue.

Motivating Nissan to re-evaluate its entire R&D strategy is the continual tightening of emissions regulations worldwide that's designed to promote the development of EVs.

The biggest driving force is the upcoming Euro 7 emissions standard that's tipped to raise development costs of compact combustion-engined cars to levels that are unsustainable.

As part of its plans, Nissan will begin phasing out development of pure-petrol power for China and Japan but continue its work on more advanced hybrids.

Instead of creating all-new engines, from now on Nissan will improve its existing family of engines. No job losses are planned, says Nikkei, and factories making traditional combustion engines will remain open.

Engineers working on combustion engines will be redeployed to develop EV motors, hybrid powertrains or moved to other divisions.

According to a recent study, 67.5 million combustion-powered cars were sold worldwide in 2021 – 15 times the number of EVs.

British research firm LMC Automotive says that number will drop radically over the next 10 years, with almost 47 million cars to be pure-electric by 2033.