By Gary S. Vasilash

Automotive business plans nowadays tend to have a title, perhaps in order to make investors think that the OEMs really have something going on because of their naming method.

Nissan has been running its Nissan NEXT business plan from FY 2020 to FY 2023.

It has its long-term Nissan Ambition 2030 waiting in the wings.

This past week it announced The Arc, which is a bridge between the two.

In announcing it, Makoto Uchida, Nissan president and CEO, said, “This plan will enable us to go further and faster in driving value and competitiveness. Faced with extreme market volatility, Nissan is taking decisive actions guided by the new plan to ensure sustainable growth and profitability.”

At its basis it is about selling more vehicles. Vehicles that are more profitable for the company.

Which is pretty much what any OEM wants to do.

So it is going to roll out 30 new models—16 electrified (which means they can be hybrids) and 14 ICE—during the next three years, then from FY 2024 to 2030 there are plans for a total 34 electrified vehicles.

On a global basis Nissan anticipates that 40% of its global sales will be electrified vehicles, then 60% by 2030.

A few days after The Arc was announced Nissan made another announcement, which is that it is going to continue in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship racing series “until at least 2030, reinforcing its Ambition 2030 electrification plans”

Presumably the thought is that if it is seen as a leader in electric vehicle racing customers will figure that it has the chops when it comes to consumer EVs, too.

And, of course, there is the obligatory comment about how there is technology transfer from the race track to the street, which a high-level powertrain engineer at a competitive company recently told me is more rhetoric than reality, given the difference in what the requirements are for the types of vehicles.

Maybe what companies really need to do is come out with a plan called “The Best,” and simply say “We are going to make the best damn vehicles for our customers, period.”

That might focus their efforts on what really matters.