Infiniti focuses more on market, brand, than sales

Q: What's the relationship between domestically manufactured Infiniti and Nissan; is it only to make use of Nissan's manufacturing base? How about the marketing and other modes of cooperation?

Daniel Kirchert:

Our two local produced car models will be manufactured in the Dongfeng Nissan joint venture, in the Xiangyang plant. We in China are surely in the direction same as the global. Infiniti, as an independent operation, then we will work on the brand marketing in China in an independent way. But we cannot make public the organization hierarch. We will inform you together with our partners. At this moment, more importantly I can tell you that the Infiniti are managed and operated separately from Nissan.

Q: We have seen the factories and markets from Infiniti's globalization strategy. What is Infiniti's future layout on research and development? Is it possible to build a R&D center in China?

Johan de Nysschen:

We already have a design center in China, and at the moment, our R&D takes place across three continents. We currently have R&D capabilities, of course, in Japan, in the United States and also in Europe, and certainly I would expect that as we move now to manufacturing in China, and increase our presence in the market, so it will follow that we could certainly establish some R&D capabilities, and to also utilize, I think, the strengths of the industry and engineering community in particular, which prevail in China, and it would form a very complementary fit to our manufacturing and design functions that we have in China.

Q: There have been some changes in SUV market after some explosive growths in Chinese market. The smaller the size is, the better the market it has. Small SUVs have been quite popular in recent years and experienced great growths. For Infiniti, I think your product plan is to develop larger SUVs. I think that there will be even larger vehicles than QX80.What's your opinion on compact SUVs? Do you have any plan on that?

Johan de Nysschen:

First, there will be no vehicle larger than a QX80. Quite clearly the phenomenon that you've identified with strong growth emerging now in the market segment for compact premium car service is one that is not lost on us. We have observed that as well. And I can assure you that we are working full speed now to also develop very compelling products for Infiniti into these market segments and that we can imagine at least two crossovers for this line up which come in below where the current QX50 is positioned. This is part of the expansion of the product portfolio that I had mentioned earlier and the first of those products will be a car that you can learn more of a little bit later this year. We'll give you a sneak preview. You have to be a little more patient.

Daniel Kirchert responded in Chinese during the interview. His answers to questions in this story are translations.