Nissan’s struggles have been an enduring part of the company’s history in recent years with sluggish sales, a CEO in a music box, and slipping market share being the least of the company’s problems.

However, the company is now on the rebound and it recently revealed the details of its ambitious comeback plan in what could be the biggest roll of the dice yet for the troubled Japanese automaker.

A purge is coming

Before Nissan can bring in the new, it has to remove some old baggage with the firm doing this by purging slow selling models bringing its lineup down from 60 to 45 vehicles globally. A lot of these axed models will be ones the company can do without and while Nissan didn’t confirm what models will be axed, some models are pretty obvious candidates including the Titan full-size pickup which has been a sluggish seller for the firm.

The good news is the company will balance things out with a fresh infusion of new models. These new models will be split into four distinct categories: Core, Heartbeat, Growth, and Partner. Nissan even teased the revived Xterra off-roader and an all-new Skyline with these two being in the Heartbeat category. Core models will include the next-gen Rogue and the funky all-electric Nissan Juke. The Growth and Partner trees were shadowed in obscurity but the latter will be entries made in partnership with other companies.

AI to be new core of the business

In addition to the shuffling of its product lineup, Nissan is also hedging its bets on AI thanks to a new technology suite it calls the AI Drive Technology (AIDT.) Unsurprisingly, Nissan chose to keep quiet about that bit of things too, but did reveal AIDT would be a companion upgrade on its existing driver assistance features including ProPilot with AIDT injecting more refined smoothness into their operations.

The company eventually wants to put AI in 90% of its vehicles but the company is taking a calculated approach and is not rushing things. This is evident in the choice of inaugural model, the Japan market Elgrand van. While the boxy Elgrand may not be the flashiest thing in Nissan’s lineup, the van does compete in a strong segment for the Japanese auto market and it will allow engineers to get real-word data before it expands the AI rollout to more vehicles.

Nissan also provided a first look at both the next-generation X-Trail (Rogue for us in the U.S.) and the revived Xterra. While Nissan chose to not reveal specifications on the Xterra, we did get a glimpse of a variant of the E-Power system that will be used in the Rogue via some Qashqais the company let us drive at their HQ recently.

It will be interesting to see how Nissan’s plans flesh out once they have some time to put the pieces in place but with the global markets still in a state of flux, Nissan will have plenty of obstacles to overcome before it can claim success in its goals.