Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, the members of one of the world’s leading automotive alliances,have announced several initiatives as part of a new cooperation business model to enhance the competitiveness and profitability of the three partner companies.
The member companies plan to build on existing Alliance benefits in areas such as joint purchasing by leveraging their respective leadership positions and geographic strengths to support their partners’ business development.
The Alliance is a unique strategic and operational partnership in the automotive world and gives us a strong edge in the ever-changing global automotive landscape, said Jean-Dominique Senard, Chairman of the Alliance Operating Board and Renault. The new business model will enable the Alliance to bring out the most of each company’s assets and performing capabilities, while building on their respective cultures and legacies. The three companies of the Alliance will cover all vehicle segments and technologies, across all geographies, while increasing their respective competitiveness, sustainable profitability and social and environmental responsibility.
The leaders of the three companies have endorsed the principles of the leader-follower scheme for vehicles, in which they will cooperate to:
- push the Alliance’s standardization strategy further, from platforms to upper bodies;
- per product segment, focus on one mother vehicle (leader car) and sister vehicles engineered by the leading company, with the support of the followers’ teams;
- ensure that leader and follower vehicles for each brand are produced using the most competitive setup, including grouping production where appropriate; and,
- continue to build on product sharing in light commercial vehicles, where the leader-follower model is already applied
The leader-follower scheme is expected to deliver model investment reductions of up to 40% for vehicles fully under the scheme. Those benefits are expected to come in addition to conventional synergies that are already delivered today.
Shared platforms and upper bodies good for the industry?
We asked Mark Czvitkovits from I-CAR if the platorm sharing is good for the repair industry.
"The recent news that the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance will work more closely to standardise platforms and upper body as part of the process can be seen as a real positive for repairers everywhere," he said. "In addition to the structure, a common electronic platform to assist diagnosis and calibrations to ADAS systems and eventually more autonomous driving will also be beneficial.
"The challenges here in Australia with the multitude of brands available and inconsistency in some repair methods continues to hinder the collision repair industry here to deliver complete, safe and quality repairs.
"The consolidation through the Alliance will benefit many aspects of automotive repair as long as the repair information that will be made available is also consistent. We have over the years witnessed inconsistencies within brands as repair methods differ when the same brand of vehicle is built in two different regions. Let us hope that for the repair industry's sake that the Alliance addresses this as well.
All in all, a sensible move to consolidate as these three brands to deliver a product in every continent and have specific strengths to build on together. It will be interesting to see how the new model releases will look after 2025," he said.
Reference regions
The Alliance also endorsed the principle of naming different parts of the world as “reference regions,” with each company focusing on its core regions with the aim to be among the most competitive and to serve as a reference for the others to enhance their competitiveness.
Under this part of the scheme, Nissan will be the reference for China, North America and Japan; Renault in Europe, Russia, South America and North Africa; and Mitsubishi Motors in ASEAN and Oceania.
With each company becoming a reference company in respective regions, the opportunities for sharing will increase to maximise fixed cost sharing, as well as leveraging each company’s assets.
The companies’ product portfolio updates will follow the leader-follower scheme, and leader and follower vehicles will be produced using the most competitive setup. For instance:
The renewal of the C-SUV segment post-2025 will be led by Nissan, while the future renewal of the B-SUV segment in Europe will be led by Renault.
In Latin America, the B-product platforms will be rationalised, evolving from four variants to only one for both Renault and Nissan products. This platform will be produced in two plants each producing for both Renault and Nissan.
In Southeast Asia and Japan, Alliance members will pursue select opportunities under the same scheme, such as the kei car collaboration between Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors.
With all of the above taken together, close to 50% of Alliance models will be developed and produced under the leader-follower scheme by 2025.
In terms of technology efficiency, the Alliance members will continue their capitalisation of existing assets to ensure that each member company continues to share the investment in platforms, powertrains and technologies. This sharing has proven its efficiency in powertrain and platform development and enabled the successful launch of the CMF-B platform for the Renault Clio and Nissan Juke, as well as the kei car platform for the Nissan Dayz and Mitsubishi eK Wagon. The CMF-C/D and CMF-EV platforms will follow soon.