Nissan Motor Co. will significantly expand the team at its China design center in Shanghai despite the extended downturn of China’s new-vehicle market. Nissan plans to increase the number of designers at the center to 80 in 2020 from around 30 now, Nissan’s senior vice president of global design, Alfonso Albaisa, said in an article on the Japanese carmaker’s China website this month. This year, Nissan moved its China design center to Shanghai, a hub of the Chinese auto industry, from the Chinese capital of Beijing. Although China’s new-vehicle sales have slowed, the nation leads the development of the global auto industry, especially in areas such as vehicle connectivity and mobile payment, Albaisa noted. As new-vehicle sales have slumped in China, so have Nissan brand’s local deliveries. In the first five months, the brand’s China sales slid 0.4 percent to 587,197. In 2018, the brand’s local deliveries rose 2.9 percent to 1.56 million.