Automotive News Europe - December 2017 - Talk from the Top Supplement - 24

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

TALK FROM THE TOP

Synergies sought
How Ghosn will maximize power of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance

arlos Ghosn ran Nissan Motor Co.
for nearly two decades before stepping down as CEO this year to focus on
his other roles - CEO of the RenaultNissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and CEO of
Renault. He also remains chairman of
Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors, of which
the alliance acquired control last year.
Ghosn is determined to strengthen the
ties that bind Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi. He says there are still significant synergies to be gained by co-developing vehicles, sharing powertrains,
stitching together supply chains and
splitting the costs of advanced new
technologies. He recently discussed
the alliance's new six-year business
plan with Lindsay Chappell, who is
News Editor at Automotive News Europe
sister publication Automotive News.
The new alliance business plan envisions combined sales of 14 million
vehicles a year for Nissan, Renault
and Mitsubishi by the end of 2022,
up from about 10 million this year.
Where will that volume increase
come from?
We'll end up this year at around 10.6 million units sold. When we say that by the
end of fiscal 2022 we'll cross the mark
of 14 million, that's a growth of about
3.5 million. Where it will come from is
not the United States - some will, but
not the bulk of it. And certainly not Europe, because the European market
will be stable. Most of it will come from
China. As you know, Nissan is deploying
its product strategy in China and Renault
is starting in China and Mitsubishi is in
full growth in China. China is a big factor
- not only the growth of the market but
the growth of the companies there.
Where else will it come from?
The second big factor will be the recovery of two markets where the alliance is
strong and we have been investing for
the past few years: Russia and Brazil.
Those markets have been down significantly. But in Russia today, we enjoy a
35 to 40 percent market share. The recovery in Russia has started and it will
benefit us as the largest player there.
Russia sales are about 1.4 million cars

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a year - it will come back to 3 million.
When you have 35 percent market
share, even if the market goes to 2.5
million sales, that's an opportunity for
us. And we already have the capacity
there to do that. Brazil is another opportunity. Nissan is still a very small
company in Brazil.
We have invested a lot but have not
seen results yet because the market collapsed as soon as the plant started to
produce. And Renault is introducing a lot
of product there and Mitsubishi also has
a huge opportunity in South America.
The alliance plan also envisions that
four shared vehicle platforms will account for 9 million vehicles. The companies now have two. What shared
platforms will be added?
We'll have 9 million cars produced on
four platforms. The first one that's already done is the [compact and midsize] C/D platform. We will add a
[subcompact] B platform. We already
have the A-plus platform, but it's very
little used by Nissan. The A is the Kwid,
which is the very small and inexpensive
car. And then there will be one platform
for electric cars.
Under the new plan, common powertrains will spread to three-fourths
of alliance vehicles, up from about
one-third now. Why is that important?
Because powertrains are big investments. And frankly, the performance of
the powertrain matters to the consumer,
but not the origin of it. The Nissan's diesel engines in Europe are all from Renault. Consumers don't care. What they
care about is the performance.
You have expressed frustration with
the slow progress of getting Renault
and Nissan working together on technologies and platforms after so many
years. As alliance CEO, how will you
speed things up?
When you bring together two different
engineering organizations and try to get
them to work together, it's always difficult. Not just for the auto industry. What's
helping us converge engineering now is

Meet the boss
❚ NAME: Carlos Ghosn
❚ T
ITLE: Renault CEO; Renault-

Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance CEO

❚ AGE: 63
❚ M
AIN CHALLENGE:

Converging the alliance's
engineering resources
to keep pace with the
huge r&d demands.

the pressure on resources. We're in a period where the demand for resources is
huge. There are so many breakthroughs
coming. Artificial intelligence, all the components of autonomous drive, connectivity - there are plenty of things coming
our way. And then you have your usual
business, plus the emissions regulations,
where you have to develop and adapt diesel and gasoline engines, transmissions,
electric cars and motors. The workload on
an individual company's engineers is huge.

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