Infiniti has placed its upcoming EV on hold as it focuses its attention to higher volume models.
Infiniti’s new boss, Johan de Nysschen seeks to expand the luxury brands global sales by shifting some of its priorities. Mainly it looks like de Nysschen is moving the brand’s focus to more high volume models rather than smaller niche vehicles like an electric vehicle or a new sports car.
Last year Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn tasked de Nysschen with the goal of bumping Infiniti’s global sales to 500,000 units by 2017, which is up from the 170,000 units it sold last year. “I’m under absolutely no illusion — 500,000 cars by 2017 is an inordinately ambitious challenge,” De Nysschen, 53, told Automotive News. “We really do have to get our heads around how we can bring the brand in that direction.”
To meet that goal Infiniti will start producing vehicles in China and England in addition to introducing a new entry-level compact model in 2015. Infiniti is also working on two new halo models that will sit above the current M sedan, which has been renamed the Q70. The two new halo models will be based on the same platform and will be toned down from the recent Infiniti sports-car concepts. They will be released by 2020. De Nysschen stated that the two halo models will not be sports cars, but instead high-performance luxury cars. He also stated that they will not be variants of a flagship sedan, instead they will be more Porsche Panamera like than a BMW 7 Series.
Although Infiniti had hoped to release its new EV by 2014, those plans have been pushed back, since EVs are still not high volume models and it will not help Infiniti reach its goal of half-million units by 2017.
