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New Nissan UK managing director James Taylor wants the firm to adopt a “mindset of growth” as it prepares for a big product push in volume segments over the next two years.

Taylor, who has only been in position for a matter of days since exiting the MD role at Vauxhall, was speaking at a preview for the new Nissan Micra in an interview focused on Nissan’s place and development in the UK car market rather than the brand’s global issues. 

He called on incentives to be offered to stimulate demand for private electric car sales and said there was more Nissan could do to promote its involvement and investment in the UK car industry. A key challenge would be ensuring that new models added incremental growth to the brand, which sold more than 100,000 cars in the UK last year, rather than have them steal sales from existing models in the range.

New product range

The new Micra will reach the UK early next year and is the first of a new wave of Nissan. There is also an imminent reveal of a new Leaf planned for June, which will go into production at Sunderland later this year. In 2026, this will be joined by an electric version of the Juke inspired by the Hyper Punk concept car. Also planned is a new A-segment electric car.

Nissan has a solid position on which to build with a new range of electric vehicles due to that brand awareness of Nissan as an EV maker, but also in pure sales terms, where the brand continues to perform strongly with the Qashqai and Juke in the UK sales charts. 

The Qashqai will get a next-generation E-Power hybrid drivetrain from the summer, which will boost real-world fuel economy, particularly at higher speeds, and reduce CO2 emissions.

“The drive is akin to that of an EV but with diesel fuel economy,” said Taylor, who has tested the latest E-Power drivetrain in a Qashqai. “It’s a real step forward, and there is a part of the company car world that needs a car like this.”

Taylor was relaxed about the absence of any PHEVs in Nissan’s range and instead sold the benefits of E-power: “As an alternative, I think it’s a really powerful opportunity for us and probably over the coming months and years we need to make a little bit more of than we have done in the past.”

Why Taylor joined Nissan

Taylor said “that as a big backer of UK PLC” he was in part attracted to Nissan by its commitment to the UK with its design centre in Paddington, R&D base in Cranfield and manufacturing plant in Sunderland.

“That resonates with me as a company I want to work for, as it has a big commitment to the UK.”

Taylor said that Nissan was ultimately a Japanese brand known for its quality and "we don’t need to play up the Britishness with flag waving”, yet there was more the brand could do to “resonate that we are a big investor in the UK”.

“We ought to showcase that. We have design centres in the UK, and we could showcase that. We’ve got a complete loop in the UK, and there’s lots we can amplify. It’s not the core story but there are certain things we can use around the edges.”

Taylor is also keen to leverage Nissan’s ‘legacy’ standing as the original electric car maker, where despite never having a range of more than two electric cars it is still seen as a prominent player due to being first to market with the Leaf.

“We’ve got all the ingredients to be a big winner out of the transition to electric,” he said. “What I guess we’ve been missing is the full range of products to capitalise on that latent awareness. Yet over the next 18 months or so, the product portfolio fills out.”

Incentives needed to boost private EV demand 

Taylor said greater flexibility offered to manufacturers by the changes to the ZEV mandate to allow trading between fuel types were “always welcome”, but “the fundamentals of the challenge and the targets remained” in trying to convince more buyers to go electric.

He said car makers had done their bit with product offerings, pricing and improving the electric range, yet there was “bits to do” with infrastructure on main routes in the country to allow people to be “confident they can live with it and charge it conveniently”. 

“Some services have 50 chargers, some five. There’s a little bit of major infrastructure still to roll out.” More local chargers were also needed to help with those who don’t have a driveway.

But a bigger issue was that there were simply “not enough private customers today who want to choose an electric car”.

“No manufacturer wants to force anyone to have an electric car, it’s got to be customer driven. But at the moment we have a supply mandated target.”

Taylor said that “something probably needs to happen from a demand stimulation point of view” as “over the past 18 months, nothing has really changed”.

“If I’m a little bit nervous about range, charging, infrastructure, speed of charging, it’s quite easy to fall back into having a hybrid and feeling like I’m making a step towards electric.

“But if there was something to give the private motorist a little extra nudge, you would get a disproportionate benefit from quite a small action. I don’t think it needs to be a huge amount of money, but it just makes everyone think electric first. You will capture a much greater percentage of people then going all the way through the funnel to electric as you captured more at the start.”

Nissan’s UK market positioning 

Taylor wanted to ensure Nissan “could be competitive in all segments” and must factor that into pricing even “as we have got quality products”.

“If you price up a bit, you’ll sell less, but if you price down, we’ll sell a bit more. The UK market does react in all the channels surprisingly quickly because there is so much information available to everyone today.

“I’m happy with performance last year [Nissan sold over 100,000 cars in 2024, 12.3% growth on 2023 for a 5.1% market share] and we want to keep that momentum going this year. Then the challenge is with new models in new segments, we have to build on top without substituting products. That’s the challenge this year.”

Ensuring products like the Qashqai and Juke continued to sell well despite Nissan expanding its presence in the B- and C-segments with the likes of the new Juke EV, Micra and Leaf “was a challenge to keep plates spinning”.“That’s for the retailers, too, as we need to get them also into a mindset of growth, because we’ve got the new cars coming in new segments.

His vision for the brand

When asked what his three-five-year plan for the company was, Taylor said that the goal was to keep its solid baseline performance with the likes of Qashqai and Juke, and then used its new electric cars to put it on the right trajectory to keep up with the ZEV mandate, while “focusing on quality throughout that transition”.

“It’s not going to be easy and there are a lot of plates to spin.  But I think we would all be really happy with that job.

“But it’s also building: how far can we push the bar above where we are today? We want happy customers but we want happy shareholders. That’s going to be the challenge to me, to work out the ingredients we have got that are strong, and then work in the background to improve.”

The Lexus ES is returning in eighth-generation form as a rival to the Audi A6 and BMW 5 Series – but, unlike its German competition, it could do away with petrol power entirely in the UK.

In Western Europe, the ES will be offered with a 199bhp hybrid powertrain as well as two battery-electric options.

However, Autocar understands that the brand's British arm is currently evaluating whether to offer exclusively the electric powertrains, given the greater proportion of EV sales in the UK compared with those in Europe.

A final decision has yet to be made, but it is highly likely the hybrid will not come to the UK.

That decision, if taken, would leave the front-driven ES 350e and four-wheel-drive ES 500e as the only versions bound for UK showrooms. The former packs a single 221bhp motor and a 77kWh lithium ion battery, yielding a range of around 329 miles between charges and a 0-62mph sprint time of 8.2sec. The 500e, meanwhile, has 338bhp and a 0-62mph time of 5.7sec, but its range – which has yet to be revealed – will be reduced compared with that of the 350e.

The new version of Lexus's executive saloon was first revealed at the Shanghai motor show in China, where it is the number one imported vehicle.

Lexus said this new generation of ES makes advances in "ride quality, comfort and quietness" over its predecessor and has been designed to offer "first-class comfort for everyone on board".

The minimalist cockpit marks a complete departure from that of the previous car and has been designed with a heavy influence from the Chinese market: physical controls are few and far between, and a large 12.3in touchscreen takes centre stage as the primary control interface. Hidden beneath the screen is a row of haptic switches which illuminate when the car is powered on.

The new ES is based on the same GA-K platform as the NX SUV. Lexus says the structure's rigidity has been increased throughout the chassis to boost refinement and responsiveness and resulting in an "agile, responsive feel that belies its size" - which is also increased over the previous car, by 165mm in length, to take the ES to 5.14m overall.

Vauxhall has previewed its the upcoming Mokka GSe with a rally inspired concept.

The Mokka GSe Rally prototype is based on the current crossover and features Bilstein rally suspension, a racing gearbox, and a lightweight chassis.

According to Vauxhall, the concept is also the world's first rally car currently being developed according to the FIA's new eRally5 regulations, meaning it could potentially be used in global rally series from next year.

Underneath, it draws power from the same 54kWh battery as the standard Mokka, and adopts the same 278bhp, 254lb ft single-motor setup from its Abarth 600e Stellantis sibling. 

While no further technical specs have been given, in the 600e, the same powertrain yield 0-62mph times of 5.9sec. It also, like the 600e, gets limited-slop differential.

Visually, underneath the GSe Rally’s striking design, it showcases a car that is clearly differentiated in styling terms to the standard Mokka with a front and rear diffs, flared wheel arches and larger alloys.

These production-ready features - largely unusual for a concept – point to what we can expect from the upcoming Mokka GSe, a car which was recently teased by Vauxhall/Opel CEO Florian Huettl and which is expected to be revealed in the coming months. 

The video also announced the sub brand would ditch models with combustion engines such as the previous Astra GSe

In addition to the Mokka GSe, Huettl hinted that there will be further news on more electric Vauxhalls. He said: “[GSe] is also a promise that [Vauxhall’s] electric future will not be driven by compromise. There is more to come in 2025 – we are just getting started.”