— 2026-01-11
Automotive Industry
Nissan Europe’s new chief, Max Messina, said he “counts every euro” in his profit and loss statement to help return the region to profitability. Messina’s challenges include steering successful launches of the new Leaf and the upcoming electric Juke as Chinese automakers flood Europe with EVs priced to undercut established brands.
Messina joined Nissan in 2022 as chief financial officer for Europe. Before that he worked as an automotive turnaround specialist at various consultants including KPMG. In October, he was appointed to oversee Nissan’s AMIEO region that includes Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India and Oceania. Messina spoke with Automotive News Europe reporter Nick Gibbs and other media outlets at Nissan’s plant in Sunderland, England.
Nissan’s European loss was $227 million in the six months ending Sept. 30. Why is Europe Nissan’ worst performing region?
The pressure on margins has been very significant. The Chinese are putting us in an uncomfortable situation. We are not here to necessarily match the Chinese margins because I do not think that will bring a bright future for anybody so we need to keep streamlining our cost base, to keep optimizing our footprint and diversifying. We have a beautiful, fully integrated organization here in U.K. with the Sunderland plant and with our R&D center and design center. It’s something quite unique that we want to capitalize on.
When can Nissan Europe be profitable again?
In Europe we almost broke even a couple of years ago. Now we have started embracing the electrification journey. You saw how much money we are investing into Sunderland. You know how many new products we are launching. When I invest 500, 600, 700 million pounds in a year and a half, you immediately see that on the P&L [profit and loss statement]. I need to look at my profitability over the life cycle of the vehicle to make sure my return on investment is positive.
Why are Chinese cars still cheaper than those from European automakers?
The Chinese clearly operate differently. Their supply chain is very different from ours. Some of them operate in a different way. We pay our suppliers on time, for example.
In China, the market is stagnant and operating profit margin is close to negative or break even probably for most of the Chinese OEMs. They have a huge overcapacity that they need to absorb by moving vehicles in Europe, which will be an incremental profit for them, even at a lower margin.
The U.K. is Nissan’s largest European market, but it is also the market where Chinese brands are showing the strongest sales growth. Should the British government impose punitive tariffs on Chinese BEV imports like the European Union has?
The Chinese will come. They will take their space. Because there is a space. Remember when 20 years ago the Koreans came in, nobody was expecting them and they took their market share. For us we need to be extremely competitive on cost and technology.
The U.K. is said to be too expensive to build volume cars. Nissan recently spent £450 million in Sunderland to build the Leaf and Juke electric cars. What is your view?
There is no silver bullet to fix competitiveness for manufacturing. How we engage with suppliers is fundamental, because as we move into a much more complex product [EVs], there is competition from markets such as China where the supply chain is clearly much more agile and much more effective.
Also, how we design cars is important. Even though Leaf production has now started, we will keep working on the cost of the car on a daily basis. We will no longer wait for face-lifts [to reduce costs].
What advantages does Nissan have?
I do not want to be arrogant here, but we believe our cars are better. Our investment into the Leaf, next year’s Juke EV and the E-power [hybrid] technology will give us the opportunity to price our cars better than the competition, because the customer wants to buy something which is better. And if I acknowledge that our product is better than anybody, Chinese, Koreans, Germans, whoever, then this has to be reflected in pricing and has to be valued as such.
Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa has launched a deep global cost-cutting push. How do the planned cost savings affect Europe?
I have lived through such times in past lives. Nissan has announced 500 billion yen of cost reductions ($3.2 billion), of which 250 billion are fixed and 250 billion are variable. We are in charge of delivering the AMIEO portion and we have a plan. We are executing. So each day, each month, I sit down with my executive team and I count each euro that comes to my P&L and improve my profitability.
We are tracking down cost reductions diligently and in ways that are unprecedented because some of the changes we are looking to do on vehicles already in production I have not seen anywhere else.
When will a battery-electric Qashqai be launched?
I will not make any statement about this because we are here mainly to focus on the Leaf and the new Juke electric.
The Sunderland factory is running at half capacity. Will you boost capacity use by building cars for other automakers?
Overcapacity in the automotive industry has been largely present for the last 20 years. We are now setting our capacity to correspond with the number of vehicles we are planning to produce in the next years.
Sunderland is going through a transformation process. Our ambition is to feed the plant with our vehicles by gaining market share. But we want to be very pragmatic. If there is anything we can do to accelerate and to absorb our fixed cost, we will.
Is Nissan in talks with potential partners for production?
We have a partner in China, Dongfeng, but for the time being we are focusing on the regional level. I cannot comment about additional opportunities that our CEO might be considering. But I am very pragmatic individual. We will explore any opportunities that financially make sense for Sunderland.
Will Sunderland return to building 500,000 cars a year with the new Leaf and electric Juke?
I want to do two million cars. But we need to look at how the market, especially EVs, is moving. The pace of EV sales has been much lower than was forecast, so we are looking at how the market is going to evolve. When we know, I can put the foot on the gas and keep expanding and investing.
When will Nissan be 100 percent electric in Europe?
If I give a date, I will be wrong. The current environment is dictated by the EU and the U.K. government. The point is how we can balance our portfolio between hybrid and electric. And when these can accelerate at the right pace. The Leaf’s range of 622 km (386 miles) will remove a lot of range anxiety. When you embrace electric driving, it’s very difficult to go backwards.