Nissan Pulls Pulsar Production From Spanish Plant

MADRID – Nissan will discontinue production of its slow-selling Pulsar and Evalia models at its Barcelona, Spain, plant in midyear.

The automaker instead will assemble the 1-ton Navara pickup and its clones for Mercedes-Benz (X-Class) and Renault (Alaskan) on one assembly line, and the NV200 light-commercial vehicle and its all-electric version, the eNV200, on the other.

“The decision is the result of changes in demand, and the new focus of Nissan will be to strengthen its leadership in electric vehicles and crossovers,” Nissan Europe President Paul Wilcox says.

No crossovers are produced at Barcelona, however, and sales expectations for the eNV200 are not high, despite the introduction of a bigger battery. Daily production of the pickups, meanwhile, has been scaled back from 268 units to 248.

Output at Barcelona for the fiscal year ending March 31 is 90,300 units, well below the 110,000 built during the previous fiscal year and less than half of the 200,000 that Nissan had set as its original target.

Since its launch in 2014, the Pulsar 5-door hatchback has failed to meet the expected level of sales. The 2014 target was 80,000 deliveries, but only 35,000 were sold in 2016 and 20,000 in 2017.

Nissan sources acknowledge the model is overpriced. The Pulsar initially was to be built in Sunderland, U.K., but at the last moment the automaker decided to use all of Sunderland’s available capacity to assemble Qashqai CUVs.

With most suppliers located in the U.K., and only a limited number replaced by Spanish suppliers, the cost of manufacturing the Pulsar in Spain was driven up. The car could not compete on price with models such as the Volkswagen Golf, Ford Focus, Peugeot 308 and Renault Megane.

In this environment, unions are concerned about the future of the Barcelona plant. The revised production program will result in a production increase of just 15,000 units, sources say.

Unions also are concerned about the ongoing secessionist movement in the Catalonia region that includes Barcelona.

Luca de Meo, CEO of Volkswagen affiliate SEAT, has warned that any measure of secession that removes Catalonia from the European Union will lead to the closure of the VW plant in Martorell, near Barcelona, and the transfer of production to elsewhere in Spain.