By Sean McLain

TOKYO -- Nissan Motor Co. said it was facing a second consecutive year of losses topping $6 billion because of the coronavirus pandemic's hit to car sales.

The company on Tuesday projected a Yen670 billion ($6.4 billion) loss for the fiscal year ending in March 2021, almost exactly the same as the annual loss reported by Nissan in May for the previous fiscal year.

While last year's losses were driven by accounting write-downs of assets affected by a restructuring plan, this year the losses are primarily coming from the day-to-day business of selling cars. Nissan expects to sell around four million this fiscal year, down from 4.9 million the previous year.

Nissan also took a hit from its partial ownership of Mitsubishi Motors Corp., which reported a Yen176 billion loss for the April-June quarter on Monday. Nissan had to set aside cash for its financing arm as more loans go sour during the pandemic.

The company had planned to spend this year overhauling its business by trimming excess factory capacity, the legacy of a now-abandoned global expansion plan. It hoped to give a quick boost to profits, then set the stage for longer-term growth with new vehicles such as the electric-powered Ariya sport-utility vehicle, due in U.S. showrooms late next year.

That overhaul is still going ahead, but as the latest results suggest, the pandemic has made a fast recovery impossible. Nissan said that while cost cuts were ahead of schedule, sales weren't expected to fully rebound for another two years.

In the U.S., the company rolled out a new Sentra entry-level sedan in late January, which earned praise from reviewers for its performance. Nissan said buyers were paying for more expensive versions of the car, but Sentra sales were down 68% in the April-June quarter compared with the same period a year earlier.

Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta said Nissan needed to sell around five million vehicles a year to hit its profit target. "Nobody has a crystal ball," he said, but he forecast that global car sales will have rebounded by next year.

Until then, Nissan is living off savings and counting on access to new loans. The company's automotive net cash, one measure of how much money it has on hand to pay its bills, fell by 76% compared with a year earlier to Yen235 billion as of June 30, or just over $2 billion.

Chief Financial Officer Stephen Ma said the company had enough cash and had access to Yen1.9 trillion in credit lines.

Write to Sean McLain at sean.mclain@wsj.com