Nissan has had a difficult year.

The automaker's sales in the United States fell a significant 11 percent in 2019, according to The New York Times.

Global profit dropped 73 percent in the first half of 2019. In Nissan's luxury division at Infiniti, cuts are being felt especially deeply. Infiniti departed the Western European market completely in 2019, citing a company-wide restructuring.

Stocks and sales both fell sharply in 2019, and Infiniti has not yet produced a new and exciting model to get customers back on board after a hard couple of years.

Here are the reasons Infiniti is in so much trouble:

Problems in the Executive Suite

Decisions in the executive suite over the last three years do not appear to have helped Nissan's overall business or Infiniti in particular. Former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn is perhaps now best known for having been arrested for fraud on Nov. 19, 2018, for allegedly mis-using company assets and failing to report all of his earnings. Ghosn was replaced by Hiroto Saikawa after his dismissal, but Saikawa had been handed the wheel of a leaky ship with a long journey ahead of it.

Via Infiniti

Under Ghosn, sellers were pushed to aggressive goals, with bonuses for hitting those benchmarks. Often, they couldn't be hit. Jalopnik suggests 2019 was a one-two punch of policies that kept dealerships on their toes and an overall slump in sales after many of the consumers who wanted a new car in 2018/2019 had already purchased one.

RELATED: Infiniti May Offer Vehicle Subscription Service To Reverse Sales Slide

Nissan officially diagnosed the problem as "an aged product portfolio and continuing efforts to normalize sales," according to Car and Driver.

Now, Infiniti has never quite recovered from the 2019 sales slump.

Bad Timing for Small SUVs

Infiniti's banner model is the QX50, a compact luxury SUV which has been around since 2013 (and arguably before that, as it spun out of the Skyline model). In Q3 2019 it was not doing well. Infiniti did see 1 percent growth in sales of the QX80, a full-sized SUV, in 2019.

Via Infiniti

This is connected to Infiniti's problem with not introducing enough truly new models, but also to overall trends in the United States. Pickup trucks and large SUVs are currently popular and historically enduring: the top three best-sellers in 2019 were pickups. (Note that Nissan itself is still on the list.)

Failure to Market Distinguishing Features

Car & Driver notes Infiniti has been trying to set itself apart from other luxury competitors  with new technology. The VC-Turbo engine, which was supposed to blow the competition away with its gas mileage but costs a lot to produce, didn't deliver on that expectation.

The Infiniti QX50 tested in their article averages 22 mpg. An internal combustion engine, the VC-Turbo was, early on, hyped as a potential rival to the fuel-saving aspects of hybrid and electric engines. A mechanism inside can vary the volume of the combustion chamber, adjusting the combustion ratio as needed and deriving a boost of work from each combustion cycle.  Since its reveal in 2017, this hasn't gained traction among customers or set the Infiniti line apart in an easy-to-understand way with clear benefits.

Unremarkable Technology

After the success of the LEAF, one might think Nissan has a good platform to move into the electric car market or keep its traditional vehicles competitive. Despite a company-wide push for all Infiniti models to run on hybrid or electric motors, it just doesn't have the name recognition among EV buffs.

In September, an Infiniti representative told Jalopnik

Infiniti is in transition as we move toward a new era of electrification, which we announced early last year. We announced in August that a new QX55 sport utility coupe will arrive next summer, and a few months after that, we’ll have an all-new core (higher volume) vehicle that will be introduced. Infiniti’s new generation of vehicles, based upon electrified platforms, are certainly on the horizon in just a couple of model years. Those will be fully electric, or fully electric with a small gasoline engine that’s there simply to help charge the batteries.

A couple of model years is still a long time to get back on track. It's possible that Infiniti might become a shorthand for luxury electric SUVs in the next decade, but with the brand's rocky 2019, it may have to be a come-from-behind victory.

NEXT: Complete Guide to Infiniti’s Car Lineup