Major automobile manufacturer Nissan has officially announced it will be canceling all plans to make electric vehicles at its assembly plant located in Mississippi. Instead, the company said it will be producing a lineup of body-on-frame trucks and sports utility vehicles (SUVs). The Japanese automaker is, according to new reports, making a major strategic pivot by walking away from its previously announced $500 million investment for electric vehicle production in Canton, Mississippi.
Nissan told suppliers about its decision on April 30, 2026. The decision is a significant shift from its 2021 commitment to turn the plant into a hub for manufacturing EVs. An official statement from the automaker said that the change aligns with current market conditions, customer demand patterns, and their new strategic direction. In other words, nobody is buying electric vehicles, so they have to pivot to stay profitable.
The facility in Canton, which was previously earmarked to produce two different models of EVs, was planning on producing 200,000 units a year by 2028. Now, they will focus entirely on making internal combustion engine vehicles. The new plan specifically focuses on the creation of body-on-frame trucks and SUVs.
According to a report from Breitbart News, one of the more notable models the plant will produce is the Xterra, a body-on-frame SUV that will “share its platform architecture with other models in the company’s portfolio.” The new Xterra will hit dealerships sometime in 2028 and feature a starting price below $40,000.
One of the big issues the new shift to internal combustion engine vehicles will solve concerns the utilization of the plant’s capacity. Right now, the plant can produce over 400,000 vehicles a year, but the current volume of production is well below that figure. In 2025, the company only sold 158,500 units of both the Altima and the Frontier, which are the two models being assembled at the plant. The new plan will ramp up the level of production to closer meet capacity.
Last year, reports emerged that the plant could end up building Honda-branded pickup trucks, but those plans have also been set aside to make way for Nissan’s new strategy. Breitbart stated that the cancellation of the electric vehicles is representative of a broader trend of automakers rethinking their EV commitments in response to the market.
When Nissan first announced their plans for the Mississippi plant in 2021, making 200,000 electric vehicles a year was highly ambitious. Market conditions over the last several years have shown that consumers are just not buying EVs at the level automakers projected. Honda also canceled three of its EV models in March 2026, which led to the company taking a massive hit in their bank account.
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Thousands of workers are employed at Nissan’s Canton facility. Switching away from electric vehicles could lead to an increase in stable employment prospects since the market has shown that traditional combustion engine vehicles are what consumers want. Being able to build several different truck models on shared platforms also provides stabilization of production volume in the long term, compared to the unpredictability presented by making electric vehicles.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video