Makoto Uchida will be replaced if CEO from Nissan by the Ivan EspinosaThe Chief Planning Officer of the company and head of Motorsports, on 1 April.
The Nissan board of directors met on 11 March and asked Uchida-San to go aside for Mr Espinosa. Uchida-San remains as a director to the shareholders’ meeting of the Automaker in June.
Because Honda and Nissan officially left their plans to merge in the middle of February, reports emerged that indicate that the board of Nissan was unhappy with the leadership of Uchida-San and they were happy to be for a change in leadership. There are also rumors that Honda is willing to breathe new life into merger conversations, provided that Uchida-san steps aside.
Other changes to the board include Guillaume Cartier who adds marketing and customer experience to his role as Chief Performance Officer, Eiichi Akashi, currently head of vehicle component technology, Chief Technology Officer and Teiji Hirata who are the head of production and supply chain management.
Asako Hoshino, Chief Brand and Customer Officer, and Hideaki Watanabe, main strategy and officer of business affairs, will both resign.
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At a short press conference, Mr Espinosa Was asked about the opportunity to breathe new life into merger interviews with Honda, how he makes plans to tackle the matte performance of Nissan in China and the US, and whether there are further plant closures on the horizon.
He did not give detailed answers to these questions, which stated that he only came from his appointment as the next CEO, and said he “needed some time to think” about those issues.
Mr Espinosa has a mechanical engineering diploma and worked as an automotive engineering analyst at Jato Dynamics before he came to Nissan Mexico in 2003, and became head of product planning by 2006.
After this he spent some time as head of marketing of commercial vehicles and then program director at Nissan Asean before taking on the role of lead product planning in Latin -America.
Since 2014, Mr Espinosa has kept senior global roles mainly in product development, as a result of which Nismo and Motorsports are added in 2019 and 2023 his portfolio. Only a year later he was elevated to become the Chief Planning Officer of the Automaker.
At night he said that his experience in different parts of the company, as well as in different regions, gave him insight into what makes Nissan “unique and valuable”.
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Makota Uchida, outgoing Nissan CEO
Speak at the press conference Uchida-san Said: “Because we revealed the reversal actions last fall, people not only began to question my responsibility outside the company, but also our employees.”
“Since I am unable to obtain the trust of some of our employees and that the board made a request, I concluded that the transition to new top management and making a new start will be in the best interest of Nissan,” he continued.
According to Uchida-San “Nissan’s top priority today is to break from the current situation as quickly as possible and to bring the company back to the growth pile.”
The company is investigating new partnership opportunities from different perspectives and has started investigating different options “, although the departing CEO did not grant or these were with Honda, the iPhone manufacturer FoxConn or another entity.
According to Uchida-San, the new management team is already involved in discussions about partnerships and how to reverse the company.
Uchida-San, who seemed to be watching in his five years and four months, said that the company had a lot on its board, including wide disturbances, such as electric vehicles and autonomous driving, as well as Nissan-specific problems, such as the aftermath of former CEO Carlos Ghosn’s arrest.
He took the honor for Nissan’s relationship with Renault, who agreed to slowly sell his interest in the Japanese car maker, to follow a more hands-off approach and to separate the product planning and parts that share bonds between the two companies.
Uchida-San noticed that Nissan “business performance that has quickly deteriorated in the past year” and said, “I am deeply regretted that I have to pass on the baton to my successor in these circumstances.”
In February, on the back of another disappointing quarter, Nissan announced that it would close three factories and implement large cost -saving measures in an attempt to save 400 billion yen ($ 4.14 billion) against the Japanese tax year of 2026.
The departing CEO spoke heartily about the successor and stated: “Espinosa-san is still in the forty and full energy” and that “he is also a real autoguage” that has more technical knowledge about Nissan’s current products than himself.
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