The Nissan e:POWER trial event was held for journalists in the ASEAN region, which consists of the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, to trial the battery assembly technology for e:POWER, of which Thailand is an important assembly base. PPTVHD36 attended a special interview. Mr. Isao Sekiguchi, President, Nissan Thailand and Nissan ASEAN Who came to answer questions from journalists from every country that attended the event
Nissan president admits that the two years were difficult. Waiting for the boom to come back! In 2025
Nissan is monitoring the role of Chinese brands in the electric vehicle market, confirming the promotion of electric vehicles and electric power in the ASEAN region.
Given the situation in Thailand where no new cars are being launched, how will Nissan solve this problem?
Sekiguchi said. Thailand is one of the most difficult markets because we do not have the latest model cars. Now that these challenges exist, the company’s senior management is aware of the situation and is working to resolve it. Thailand is and will remain an important production center for Nissan. But for details, please promise to talk in a reasonable amount of time. This is currently in the process of establishing a global medium-term plan, which will be used between April 2024 and March 2027, which will be announced in March 2024.
This plan is an important matter that we are focusing on and working to achieve. We will not give in just because more Chinese competitors enter the market, and we certainly will not be indifferent.
How can distributors (dealers) survive if there are no new car models?
We continue to support our agents with enhanced support programs. In addition, we currently have more than 500,000 Nissan vehicles in Thailand, based on data from 50 to 60 Nissan customers. The percentage who used the car for more than 8 to 9 years, including Nissan Teana and Nissan X-Trail, which have already been discontinued for sale in Thailand. There are still customers of all Nissan vehicle models coming back to use our services.
Furthermore, we are in the process of creating a program related to customer service. This is so that dealers can stay afloat while waiting for new models to arrive. We will focus on after-sales service when Nissan customers return to use the service again, and we are working with dealers on this.
Because many of our dealers have been with us for more than 30 years and of course we have to maintain good business partners like them as well as customers who are waiting for new models from Nissan.
The launch period of the first generation Nissan Kicks e-POWER and the second generation are quite far apart, so what happened?
If we look at 2019, we took a huge financial hit. At that time, there had to be a market classification. Nissan aims to mainly target the US and Chinese markets, as the projects we had to launch for different models were postponed and affected, and of course Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand have been affected since then.
While some models were launched in Japan, it was asked whether people would like it if they were imported to these countries, for example, the Nissan Sakura, which is suitable for Japan in terms of driving distance. But will it be accepted in Thailand? We are scanning We are studying the opportunity We have found that customers are different from customers in Japan, however, Nissan does not leave these opportunities open, we are studying to make sure first.
However, the number of official Nissan dealers in Thailand currently stands at around 150 nationwide. As for the past, the number was about 180, a decrease of more than 20%.
“Reader. Infuriatingly humble coffee enthusiast. Future teen idol. Tv nerd. Explorer. Organizer. Twitter aficionado. Evil music fanatic.”