Nissan Confirms Mexico Plant Will Open in 2018

Nissan Motor Co. says it will go forward with plans to begin making Infiniti-brand luxury QS30 small crossover vehicles in Mexico a year from now, regardless of the Trump administration’s vow to revamp or abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Last year Nissan assembled 848,000 cars, trucks and vans under its namesake brand at factories in Aguascalientes and Cuernavaca. Many were shipped to the U.S., where the company has two assembly plants with combined capacity to build about 1 million vehicles. Nissan sales in the U.S. totaled 1.56 million units in 2016, according to Autodata Corp.

The carmaker will produce QS30 at a $1 million factory it is erecting in partnership with Daimler AG in Aguascalientes. Daimler is expected to build Mercedes-Benz GLA small crossovers there.

When the plant was announced in July 2015, the partners said the facility would open with annual capacity to make 230,000 vehicles—and expand to 300,000 units by 2021 as additional models were added. Daimler and Nissan haven’t said how new U.S. tariffs on imports might affect those plans.