After keeping the car world in suspense, Nissan has finally admitted that it is halting production of its gas-electric Altima Hybrid. Several leading automotive magazines had already reported that the Altima Hybrid would not be produced after the 2011 model year. Now, that news has become official.
There are apparently many reasons for this decision. Rumor had it that the Altima Hybrid was simply a stop-gap product from the beginning. It was said that Nissan had felt forced into the hybrid market, but had only entered it halfheartedly.
Nissan's CEO, Carlos Ghosn, has repeatedly announced the company's goal of becoming the leading seller of electric vehicles in the near future. However, the company's product spokesman, John Schilling, has admitted that they plan to use other technologies in the future, including hybrids.
Originally, Nissan did not have any hybrid technology of its own, The Altima Hybrid was built using technology that was licensed from Toyota. It combined a Nissan 2.5 liter, inline-4 engine with a nickel-metal-hydride battery pack powered electric motor and a two-speed continuously variable transmission.
Licensing outside technology is no longer necessary. Nissan has developed a hybrid system of its own and is using it in the 2012 Infinity M35h Hybrid. The new M class hybrid system in the Infinity M35h uses lithium-ion batteries instead of the NiMH batteries that were used in the Altima.
Speculation has it that Nissan is simply planning to produce a new hybrid model that has been engineered in-house.
Nissan is in the process of investing approximately $1.6 billion in Smyrna, TN to build a lithium-ion battery plant. The town of Smyrna is where the Altima hybrid has been produced. This area is also the proposed site for the production of the Nissan Leaf EV, an electric vehicle.
The battery plant's capacity to produce batteries is expected to be 200,000 per year, and the Leaf plant's production capacity is just 150,000. This could leave a surplus of 50,000 batteries available for use in hybrid vehicles.
Another theory for the discontinuation of the Altima is poor sales. Nissan only sold the model in the ten states that had the strictest emission guidelines; i.e. California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont. Competition from the Ford Fusion Hybrid and the Toyota Camry Hybrid also cut into the Altima Hybrid's potential market. This led to a total sales figure of only 35,000 units since the it was first introduced in 2007.
Most experts expect that Nissan will begin producing new hybrids using their newest technology in the near future.
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