Nissan To Start Building New Rogue For North America In Japan As Well

Nissan has announced that it will start producing the Rogue crossover (sold as the X-Trail in Japan and Europe) at its production subsidiary in Kyushu for export to North America.

Production will start in spring 2016 and will have an annual pace of 100,000 units. The Japanese plant will be the third Rogue production site after Tennessee (United States) and Busan (South Korea).

The decision has been made because of the Nissan Rogue’s popularity in the United States. Ever since its launch in November 2013, the Rogue has been in high demand in the US.

January to June sales were about 135,000 units this year, up 36.3 percent on the same period last year.

Nissan chose the Kyushu plant due to its “quality, cost competitiveness and flexibility, especially its gold-standard mixed-production lines adopted from the Renault-Nissan Alliance.” Another advantage for the manufacturing facility is that it already builds another version of the Rogue for export to North America – the previous generation model.

Nissan expects the additional production will help it bring its annual Japanese production level back to 1 million units in fiscal year 2016.