Nissan’s Future Might Be Looking Dimmer

Good morning! It’s Monday, May 19, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, we’re looking at Nissan’s future plans, as well as the waning grasp of foreign automakers on China’s luxury market. We’ll also take a look at the return of New Jersey Transit, and Volkswagen’s cooling love towards Italdesign.

Nissan’s been struggling as of late, and it’s been left up to new CEO Ivan Espinosa to dig the company out. He’s planning to do so by shuttering factories, to cut costs, but that’s a risk in our modern trade-war environment. From Reuters:

The automaker is mulling closing Japan’s Oppama plant, where Nissan started production in 1961, and the Shonan plant operated by Nissan Shatai, in which Nissan is a 50% stakeholder, the sources said, which would leave it with just three vehicle assembly plants in Japan.

Overseas, Nissan is considering ending production at plants in South Africa, India and Argentina, and cutting the number of factories in Mexico, one of the sources said.

Japan’s third-biggest automaker unveiled sweeping new cost cuts on Tuesday, saying it would reduce its workforce by around 15% and cut production plants to 10 from 17 globally as it seeks to push through a turnaround.

Consolidating factories is good for costs, though it can leave you without excess capacity to build more cars should your fortunes turn around. Right now, it may also leave you open to country-by-country tariffs that a more diversified approach could dodge.

BMW has been knocked out of the top luxury spot in China, and its usurper is a domestic brand: Aito, a collaborative play between Huawei and Chinese automaker Seres. It’s also a brand that sprung up out of nowhere, all within just a few years. From Bloomberg:

In under four years, Seres Group Co., a small Chinese automaker once best known for its 30,000 yuan ($4,200) minivans, has beaten luxury legacy names like BMW and Mercedes to become the nation’s hottest high-end car seller.

Formerly called DFSK Motor, Seres partnered with telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. in 2021 to launch the Aito brand of premium electric and hybrid sport utility vehicles. Since then, Seres has had a dizzying rise. Sales tripled in three years to around 427,000 vehicles in 2024, while the company’s Shanghai-listed stock is up 120%.

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China’s luxury segment was seen as the last slice of the automotive market relatively insulated from the EV transition that’s left mass market foreign carmakers such as Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co. struggling to catch up. The thinking used to be that newer EV manufacturers with zero pedigree couldn’t match the brand prestige they offered. Aito has proven that wrong and shown how Chinese consumers’ luxury tastes are shifting.

The M9, Aito’s top-selling vehicle, is a sharp-looking crossover. It’s not hard to understand why Chinese buyers would go for a local car that looks good and has all the bells and whistles they’re after. Really, the only thing that’s hard to understand is how foreign automakers continue to compete. 

The engineers of New Jersey Transit called for a strike last week, leaving untold New Jersians with no access to the greatest city in the world for a full weekend. Now, pending ratification by the union’s membership, the strike is off — the Hudson can be crossed once more. At least, once those engineers have had a chance to get everything back up and running again. From the Wall Street Journal:

NJ Transit and union leaders representing the railroad’s locomotive engineers reached a tentative deal Sunday, ending a three-day strike that affected hundreds of thousands of commuters across New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Rail operations will resume Tuesday, the railroad said.

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The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said it had reached a deal with the railroad on hourly wages that surpassed those in a proposal that was rejected by the union’s members last month. The new agreement must still be ratified by the union’s members.

The primary sticking point for the union was wages, and representatives have said that the latest offers from management do better than offers that membership had rejected before. Strikes work, folks. Keep that in mind, and start building your solidarity now. 

Italdesign, home of Giorgetto Giugiaro, has penned some of the most beautiful vehicles ever to hit tarmac. It’s also drawn up some real oddballs in its history, and parent company Volkswagen seems to be thinking about the latter recently. In fact, VW is thinking about ditching the whole thing if it can. From Reuters:

Volkswagen is considering a plan to divest from its design and engineering unit Italdesign, union representatives told Reuters on Monday, as part of the German automaker’s efforts to overhaul its European operations.

The group is assessing a possible sale of Turin-based Italdesign, but it could also consider alternative options, including finding a partner for it, representatives of the Fiom and FIM Cisl unions said after a meeting with Italdesign management earlier on Monday.

Italdesign probably isn’t the most profitable wing of the Volkswagen Auto Group, but it’s a part of motoring history. It’d be a shame to see it sold off for parts, rather than preserved. 

It’s bright and beautiful out. The sun is shining, the wind is keeping things tolerably cool, and it’s a perfect day to just lounge on the grass somewhere. Go hang out at your local park.