Nissan News: Nissan Going Down The Modular Platform Route

[William Maley]

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William Maley

Editor/Reporter - CheersandGears.com

March 1, 2012

Nissan is taking a page out of the Volkswagen playbook with their announcement of a new modular platform.

Called the Common Module Family (CMF) architecture, Nissan says the platform will allow the company to share up to 80 percent of parts between all new Nissan vehicles. CMF is comprised of four distinct components to each vehicle: the engine compartment, front chassis/sub frame, the cabin, and the rear chassis. Each has its own options to build minivans, SUVs, sedans, or hatchbacks.

Besides helping Nissan reduce costs and manufacturing complexities, the move will allow the company to launch new vehicles more quickly, and spread new technologies throughout its product line.

Nissan says the platform will premiere in 2013.

Press Release is on Page 2

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Nissan Unveils ‘Nissan CMF’ Next-generation Vehicle Engineering

- 4+1 Big Module Concept -

YOKOHAMA, Japan -

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. today announced the introduction of its next-generation vehicle engineering concept, named Nissan Common Module Family (CMF). Nissan vehicles developed under the CMF strategy are slated to enter the marketplace from 2013.

In vehicle development, cost reductions are fundamental to maintaining product competitiveness amid the increasing calls for environmental and safety improvements that often increase costs. In response to the corresponding challenges, Nissan created CMF, which combines modular engineering with Nissan's own engineering technologies, in areas such as simulation and variation engineering (a way to enhance commonization) and the pursuit of simplicity. Through the introduction of CMF, Nissan expects to dramatically raise the appeal of its products and thereby significantly expand sales volume.

Nissan has long been promoting vehicle platform commonization, with several vehicle variations derived from a single platform. This has become critical to achieving the rapid improvements in products demanded by today's competitive global marketplace. Each new vehicle that is developed requires distinctive characteristics, improved fuel economy, passenger safety and IT features, and the rapid application of the latest technologies into the development process. At the same time, volume efficiencies need to be achieved through the extensive use of common vehicle structures, components and parts. Up to now, these contrasting elements have been difficult to balance. To contend with these challenges, Nissan is implementing its next-generation "Nissan CMF" vehicle engineering strategy.

The application of Nissan CMF entails the use of four modules - engine compartment, cockpit, front underbody and rear underbody - as well as the architecture for electronic components, with each module having appropriate variations. Vehicles are designed by combining these modules in different ways. Depending on the module configuration, a variety of vehicles - compacts, large-sized vehicles through to tall SUVs - can be efficiently designed.

Nissan has committed to introducing 90 new technologies by 2016. The launch of Nissan CMF will enable commonization that transcends vehicle segments, lower costs, and facilitate the simultaneous application of attractive new technologies across several models that up to now had been clustered in higher-end segments. Nissan CMF will bring new technologies to a wider range of Nissan owners around the world faster than ever before.

Nissan will introduce 51 new models over the course of its mid-term business plan, Nissan Power 88, to offer more attractive and competitive products to potential customers all over the world.

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[Drew Dowdell]

Everyone will get to this eventually

[G. David Felt]

Weird, I thought most auto manufactures, especially the japan companies were already on a module product /assembly line to quickly build product?

Was this not the reason GM, Ford, etc American auto companies were lagging in quality and ease of producing more than one type of auto off a single assembly line? Or do I have this confused with some other process?

[Robert Hall]

Sounds like it's a more fine grained version of platform sharing...building a car structure from a set of reusable subcomponents..it's an object-oriented approach..

[Drew Dowdell]

This is what Alpha, Gamma and Delta II are. Gamma and Delta II have some interchangeable parts and Delta II and Delta II and theta have some interchangeable parts.