Car manufacturer Nissan is migrating its on-premise computing workloads to Oracle’s Cloud network in a bid to cut costs and reverse a recent financial slump.

The Japanese automotive giant uses software-based Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and structural simulation techniques to design and test cars for external aerodynamics and structural failures.

However, the automotive sector has been hit hard by the pandemic and many car manufacturers are turning to cloud computing providers to process increasing volumes of data at a lower cost. French firm Renault recently signed a multi-year deal with Google Cloud to store its data and use its analytical services, for example.

Nissan’s economic troubles actually started before the outbreak, posting its worst year-on-year performance for a decade in 2019. Now, rather than keep it in-house, the firm is moving performance and latency-sensitive engineering simulations to Oracle Cloud where Nissan hopes it will achieve higher performance and lowers costs.

Nissan products rely on digital processes to make quick and critical design decisions that improve on areas such as fuel efficiency, reliability and safety. The firm will be using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s compute, networking and storage services, including an optimised HPC application that will allow Nissan to benefit from the industry’s first and only bare-metal HPC solution, according to Oracle.

“Nissan is a leader in adopting cloud-based high-performance computing for large scale workloads such as safety and CFD simulations,” said Bing Xu, the GM of engineering systems at Nissan. “We selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s HPC solutions to meet the challenges of increased simulation demand under constant cost savings pressure. I believe Oracle will bring significant ROI to Nissan.”

The move to Oracle is part of Nissan’s wider financial restructuring. It plans to downsize global production, discontinue unprofitable models and focus on improving its electric vehicle range. The company hopes to return to profitability by 2023.