Produced by | Bullet Finance

Art Editor | Qianqian

Reviewed by | Songwen

On September 22, Dongfeng Nissan brought the launch event for its new N7 model to the 'sofa factory.'

This symbolic arrangement not only continues Nissan's long-standing brand narrative of comfort but also reveals the urgency of this veteran joint-venture automaker to reshape its new image.

And this is not an isolated product update. Prior to the all-electric sedan N7, the plug-in hybrid sedan N6 and the SUV NX8, offering both all-electric and extended-range powertrains, have already been launched. From sedans to SUVs, and from all-electric to plug-in hybrid and extended-range, Dongfeng Nissan is rapidly completing its new energy product matrix at an unprecedented pace.

However, the dense [intensive] rollout of products has not synchronize [simultaneously] translated into stabilized sales. The most symbolic case is the N7—in August 2025, this highly anticipated all-electric sedan saw monthly sales exceed 10,000 units; by August 2026, publicly reported retail sales had dropped to 928 units, a year-on-year decline of approximately 91%.

From over 10,000 monthly sales to less than a thousand, the N7 took just one year. This disparity shows that while Dongfeng Nissan can quickly generate market enthusiasm through pricing, configurations, and brand accumulation, it has yet to prove that its new energy models can sustain a complete product lifecycle.

For this joint-venture automaker, which has long maintained annual sales of over one million units, transformation is no longer a choice. The real test lies in whether, as the fuel car market accelerates its contraction, new energy growth can promptly fill the gap, and whether local R&D and China's supply chain advantages can be transformed into product competitiveness. This will directly determine the speed and quality of Dongfeng Nissan's transformation.

1. Expansion of the N Series: A Second Growth Curve Takes Shape

Over the past year or so, the most noticeable change at Dongfeng Nissan has not been the launch of a single new energy vehicle but the complete rewriting of its product launch rhythm and development logic.

Its product system, once supported by traditional mid-to-low-end fuel models like Sylphy, Teana, and Qashqai, is being reorganized with a new matrix covering all-electric, plug-in hybrid, and extended-range vehicles. The N Series has thus become a key window for observing Dongfeng Nissan's transformation progress.

This product offensive began with the N7.

In April 2025, Dongfeng Nissan launched the N7, its first new energy strategic model under the Tianyan architecture. Positioned as a mid-to-high-end all-electric sedan, it was priced between RMB 119,900 and RMB 149,900.

More noteworthy than the price itself is the change in its development model: the N7 no longer follows Nissan's global model logic but is instead designed by a Chinese team, with local intelligent partners like Momenta integrated. Cabin comfort, advanced driving assistance, and family-oriented features became its core selling points.

This means Dongfeng Nissan has begun shifting from past 'global model imports' to truly developing for Chinese needs. The N7, as its first model, serves as a test of whether Dongfeng Nissan's local R&D system can truly adapt to the Chinese market.

By the end of 2025, Dongfeng Nissan extended the N Series to the plug-in hybrid market. The new model N6, developed on the same new energy technology architecture as the N7, also targets the mainstream family sedan market priced between RMB 100,000 and RMB 150,000.

In April 2026, the all-electric and extended-range dual-power SUV NX8 was launched, with an official guide price of RMB 159,900 to RMB 184,900 and a limited-time promotional price as low as RMB 149,900. The five-seat new energy SUV NX7, unveiled in August 2026, further fills the product gap in the mainstream SUV market for the N Series.

From the N7 and N6 to the NX8, Dongfeng Nissan completed its expansion from sedans to SUVs and from single all-electric to parallel all-electric, plug-in hybrid, and extended-range powertrains within one year.

According to the company's plan, Dongfeng Nissan will launch six new energy models by the end of 2027 and continue to expand its product lineup.

However, a formed matrix does not equal an established growth curve. The N7, N6, and NX8 enter China's most fiercely competitive mainstream price segments, facing not only other joint-venture brands but also domestic brands like BYD, Geely, Changan, Leapmotor, and Xpeng, which have already established new energy scale advantages. The latter generally respond faster in product iteration, intelligent cockpits, advanced driving assistance, online marketing, and user operations.

Meanwhile, new energy models must bear the costs of batteries, intelligent cockpit chips, advanced driving assistance hardware, and software development. As prices continue to decline, profit margins for automakers will only shrink further. Continuous iteration, after-sales support, and channel subsidies will further increase investment.

Therefore, to measure whether the N Series has formed a second growth curve, one must look beyond launch orders or short-term sales and consider whether transaction prices remain stable, whether scale growth can cover R&D and marketing costs, and whether reasonable profitability can be maintained throughout the product lifecycle.

2. Impressive New Energy Sales, But Not Yet a Pillar

The numbers present an even starker contrast. In the first half of 2026, Dongfeng Nissan's new energy sales increased by 192% year-on-year; in August, the N Series accounted for 35.7% of the company's wholesale sales. However, in the same month, terminal sales across Dongfeng Nissan's three brands (Nissan, Venucia, and Infiniti) totaled only 24,952 units, with Nissan's China sales declining by 51.9% year-on-year.

This indicates that, amid a ' Fierce attack [fierce assault]' by the entire new energy vehicle market, Dongfeng Nissan is experiencing a typical structural mismatch: on one hand, new energy models are rapidly gaining traction, with their weight in internal sales continuously rising; on the other hand, while the new energy business has become the brightest growth segment, it is not yet strong enough to replace the old pillars.

This is the sharpest contradiction in Dongfeng Nissan's current transformation.

In 2025, Dongfeng Nissan's three brands—Nissan, Venucia, and Infiniti—sold a total of 601,000 units. Among them, the Sylphy alone accounted for 320,000 units, more than half of the total; new energy models barely exceeded 50,000 units in cumulative annual sales. In other words, traditional fuel models like the Sylphy, Teana, Qashqai, and X-Trail remain the core forces supporting Dongfeng Nissan's sales volume.

This product structure reflects clear path dependence. Fuel vehicles not only contribute to sales but also affect factory capacity utilization, parts procurement scale, dealer revenue, and after-sales business. Even if new energy models achieve high year-on-year growth, as long as their absolute scale remains insufficient to offset the contraction of fuel vehicles, the company's overall sales will struggle to stabilize.

This contradiction became even more pronounced in 2026. In the first half of the year, Dongfeng Nissan's cumulative sales reached 206,700 units; sales dropped to 21,700 units in July and rebounded to 25,000 units in August, but the overall scale remained under pressure.

Extending the observation period makes the pressure even more apparent. In 2025, Dongfeng Nissan's annual sales were 601,000 units, averaging about 50,000 units per month; the 25,000 units in August 2026 were only about half of that monthly average.

Once traditional mainstay models accelerate their contraction, current new energy growth is still insufficient to fully fill the gap. Dongfeng Nissan now faces not just fluctuations in individual model sales but the dual pressures of declining old pillars and unstable new ones.

This pressure is not unique to Dongfeng Nissan but a common structural challenge faced by joint-venture automakers in the Chinese market. Data from the China Passenger Car Association shows that in August 2026, the retail penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles in China reached 65.2%; meanwhile, retail sales of traditional fuel passenger vehicles declined by more than 40% year-on-year.

New energy vehicles have gradually shifted from an incremental choice to the market mainstream, while the contraction of fuel vehicles is no longer just a short-term cyclical fluctuation.

In the past, the Sylphy built a strong scale advantage in the family sedan market through fuel efficiency, ride comfort, reliability, and an extensive dealer network.

Today, before its new energy business is fully mature, models like the Sylphy and Teana remain crucial for stabilizing sales, cash flow, and the channel system. Against this backdrop, Dongfeng Nissan clearly cannot abruptly abandon its years-long reliance on fuel vehicles in the short term.

As a result, Dongfeng Nissan proposes 'equal intelligence for fuel and electric vehicles,' attempting to extend the product lifecycle of fuel vehicles. The Teana introduces the HarmonyOS cockpit, while the 15th-generation Sylphy continues to defend the mainstream family sedan market.

The core logic is that, while fuel vehicle users still exist, bridging the experience gap between traditional models and new energy products through improved intelligent cockpits and human-machine interaction capabilities can help alleviate the transition.

Ultimately, Dongfeng Nissan faces a 'defend-while-attack' transformation: it must rely on fuel models like the Sylphy to maintain sales, cash flow, and channel stability while rapidly scaling up the N Series; it must enter the mainstream new energy market at low prices while preserving profitability and brand value.

Dongfeng Nissan's real pressure lies not in whether it can launch new energy vehicles but in whether its new energy business can grow into a new scale and profit pillar before the fuel vehicle base significantly contracts.

3. Localization, Platformization, and Global Collaboration

If the dense [intensive] launch of N Series models is the most visible result of Dongfeng Nissan's transformation, then the restructuring of its R&D, decision-making, channel, and export systems represents the underlying engineering that determines whether this transformation can be sustained.

'A product matrix can be quickly filled in the short term, but whether a traditional joint-venture automaker can truly adapt to the Chinese market depends on whether it achieves faster decision-making, stronger local R&D capabilities, and the ability to export Chinese innovations globally,' an industry insider told Bullet Finance.

Dongfeng Nissan summarizes this transformation model as 'GLOCAL,' combining Nissan's globally accumulated manufacturing, safety, and quality systems with China's local R&D, supply chain, and market responsiveness.

This shift is also reflected in management's redefinition of the joint-venture model. At the 2026 Beijing Auto Show, Zhou Feng, then Deputy General Manager of Dongfeng Nissan, summarized the essence of 'joint-venture new forces' as 'an evolution in customer-centric thinking' and proposed leveraging Chinese teams, technologies, resources, and speed to drive continuous evolution in technology, products, and services.

Compared to broadly emphasizing joint-venture advantages, this formulation places user needs, R&D dominance, and decision-making efficiency at the core, meaning GLOCAL is not just supply chain localization but an adjustment in operating logic.

In the past, joint-venture automakers typically completed model definition and core R&D at overseas headquarters before importing mature products into the Chinese market. This model once allowed for cost-sharing through global platforms and market access via brand and technological advantages, but it involved long decision chains and relatively sluggish responses to local user needs.

In a rapidly iterating market driven by electrification and intelligence, a product that still requires a lengthy global coordination and import cycle will already be technologically and configurationally outdated compared to competitors by its launch.

Competing in intelligence is not simply about procuring chips, LiDAR, or software solutions but integrating technologies from different suppliers into a stable, unified, and continuously upgradable user experience. If automakers lack system definition capabilities, their products may have high hardware configurations but struggle to differentiate in software synergy, data loops, and iteration efficiency.

According to Dongfeng Nissan's previously announced plan, the company will continue to invest RMB 10 billion in electrification and intelligence R&D by the end of 2026; as of April this year, its R&D team had expanded to 4,000 people, with plans to further supplement talent in AI and intelligence.

However, R&D headcount and financial investment are just basic conditions and do not necessarily equate to innovation efficiency. What truly determines the success of the 'GLOCAL' model is whether the Chinese team gains sufficient product definition and resource allocation authority, whether shareholder decision chains can be further shortened, and whether R&D results can quickly enter mass production.

Management reshuffles have occurred in tandem with this direction. In August 2026, Nie Chunfei succeeded Zhou Feng as Deputy General Manager of Dongfeng Nissan, becoming the Chinese head of the joint venture.

Public records show that Nie Chunfei previously worked in R&D and procurement at Dongfeng Nissan before serving as head of Zhixin Technology, Dongfeng's core new energy component platform. Compared to a background purely in marketing or joint-venture coordination, his experience spans R&D, procurement, and the new energy supply chain.

This personnel adjustment thus signals a strengthening of cost control, platform development, and mass production synergy.

After taking office, Nie Chunfei proposed at the Dongfeng Nissan Technical Center's R&D 2030 MTP strategy launch event that R&D personnel should face the market and users, use user value as the ultimate benchmark, and continuously improve efficiency and global capabilities.

The strategy, centered on 'SMART, GLOCAL,' promotes synergy between model development and technology development, as well as platform-based and systematic upgrades to the R&D system. Its practical direction is clear: Dongfeng Nissan's competitive focus has shifted from 'having new energy products' to whether it can iterate faster and at lower cost while replicating Chinese R&D achievements in overseas markets.

In November 2025, Nissan China and Dongfeng Group jointly invested RMB 1 billion to establish Nissan Import & Export (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd., with 60% and 40% ownership, respectively. The N7 and Frontier Pro PHEV were listed as the first export models, with the NX8 also seen as a potential export product by Nissan. According to Nissan's stated goal, exports of China-made models are planned to exceed 100,000 units in the short term and reach approximately 300,000 units long term.

This arrangement means China's role in Nissan's global system is also changing. It is no longer just a regional unit responsible for producing and selling models imported from overseas headquarters but is beginning to undertake new energy product R&D, manufacturing, and export tasks.

However, exporting is not as simple as shipping domestic models overseas. Significant differences exist across markets in regulatory certifications, tariff policies, data security, charging standards, consumer preferences, and after-sales service. In-car applications and advanced driving assistance solutions commonly used in China may not be directly replicable elsewhere.

Dongfeng Nissan not only needs to leverage Nissan's overseas brand, distribution channels, and service networks but also bears the responsibilities for product adaptation, parts supply, and local operational costs.

For Dongfeng Nissan, this represents both an opportunity and a more rigorous test of its capabilities. If the Chinese team can continuously develop products that meet global demand, it will demonstrate that the 'GLOCAL' model has truly achieved a fusion of global standards and Chinese innovation. However, if it primarily relies on low prices for domestic competition, it will struggle to generate stable profits and the ability to replicate success overseas, making it difficult for 'going global' to evolve into a new growth trajectory.

From the initial monthly sales exceeding 10,000 units upon the launch of the N7 to dropping below 1,000 units a year later, Dongfeng Nissan's transition to new energy vehicles has revealed deeper issues beyond just 'whether there are new models.' While new models can quickly enter the market relying on pricing and marketing, to become a true second growth curve, they must sustain stable sales, reasonable pricing, and a complete product lifecycle.

For Dongfeng Nissan, which once established market recognition with the concept of a 'mobile living room,' the real challenge in its full transition to electrification is not just whether its comfort-focused branding can persist. Rather, it is whether the company can establish a new foundation capable of supporting scale, profitability, and brand value in a timely manner before its old core business declines.

*The featured image in the article is sourced from the official Dongfeng Nissan website.