Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi reaffirm alliance

THE Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance has taken further steps to ease political tensions between its member companies that surfaced in the wake of the financial misconduct scandal surrounding former chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn.

A meeting of the Alliance Operating Board (AOB) in the Japanese city of Yokohama this week resulted in the ratification of a new framework intended to “enhance the ability of the Alliance member companies to capitalize on the individual company’s strengths and complement their strategies”.

Under the framework, each alliance partner will serve as “reference company for a dedicated region”, with Nissan responsible for China, Renault allocated to Europe and Mitsubishi put in charge of South East Asia.

Also, in a method echoing that of Volkswagen Group, each company will take the lead for development and engineering of platforms, drivelines and “key technologies” that are then shared among the alliance partners.

One of the first outcomes of this will be Mitsubishi’s lead role in developing new-generation utes, with the Triton forming the basis of future Renault and Nissan one-tonners as confirmed last September by then Mitsubishi Motors COO Ashwani Gupta, who recently took up the equivalent role at Nissan.

The AOB also confirmed that Renault will develop and manufacture a van at its Sandouville plant in France for Mitsubishi to sell in the Oceania region, which as GoAuto has reported, will be reprise the Express nameplate in Australia.

A decision was also made to pool all three companies’ corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) credits in Europe as early as this year.

Finally, all three alliance partners will announce their strategic mid-term plans around May this year, which will “integrate the major consequences of the Alliance Operating Board decisions”.

The announcement of this new framework came shortly after Renault announced the appointment of former Volkswagen Group senior executive Luca de Meo as CEO, effective July 1 this year.

Mr de Meo will replace Thierry Bollore, who was ousted last October in the latest of several leadership changes that appear to be reducing the number of executives within the alliance who had close links to Carlos Ghosn while repairing fractured relations between the three alliance partners.

In a statement outlining the new framework, all three partners “reiterated that the Alliance is essential for strategic growth and enhance competitiveness for each company”.

“The AOB also reaffirmed key programs outlined at the previous board meeting in November to support initiatives that will enable each member company to increase competitiveness and profitability amid the industry shift to new mobility services,” said the statement.

“We are reinforcing the collaboration models to fully leverage the strengths within each company to enhance our leadership across regions, products and new technologies.”