Renault and Nissan plan to rejuvenate their two-decades-old cooperation with a range of industrial projects alongside an impending agreement to rebalance capital ties to improve a partnership that has become tense.
The partners are set to work on five projects initially, people familiar with the situation said. One of them involves India, where the companies operate a plant in Chennai making small cars, engines and gearboxes, and another joint work on commercial vehicles, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t yet public.
The desire to agree on fresh common projects as part of the three-way pact, also including junior partner Mitsubishi Motors, signals the companies see a joint future for the alliance that had to be pieced together again after the 2018 arrest of former leader Carlos Ghosn. While there’s little indication about the potential significance of the planned projects, Renault-Nissan can ill-afford to waste synergies in the increasingly competitive shift to electric cars.