- The Renault-Nissan group and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation have announced their intention to work on several common projects regarding:

1. Marketing, as a first step they will market two sedan cars under the Mitsubishi brand from the Renault range: 

• a segment D sedan produced at the Renault-Samsung Busan plant in South Korea manufactured for the United States and Canada (One could imagine it being a Samsung SM5/Renault Latitude).

• a C-segment sedan whose place of production has not yet been defined (maybe a Samsung SM3/Renault Fluence).

2. Sharing technology on electric vehicles and on the latest generation platforms. Thus, the existing cooperation between Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (under the joint venture NMKV) would be extended to the Renault-Nissan alliance. Nissan and Mitsubishi have developed a common platform for the "Kei-cars" segment, specific to the Japanese market. The cooperation between Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi will be able to enjoy the benefits of a model produced on this platform. The car is destined for the global market and an electric version will also be marketed.

3. The sharing of production capacity.

  

- We have presented in a recent analysis the evolution of carmakers on the European market by brand from 2000 to 2013.

- This document focuses on an analysis by group and by control group (country where the  final decisions are made) over the same period. For such an analysis, the Renault-Nissan alliance has a special positioning. Is it a group or an alliance? Renault is by far the first shareholder of Nissan (with 45 %) while Nissan owns 15% of Renault capital. It is therefore usual to consolidate the data of Renault group (Renault-Dacia-Samsung) and Nissan group (Nissan-Infiniti), in the same way as the number of vehicles produced in Chinese JV are consolidated into Western and Japanese groups. However, in order to get a precise idea of the situation, we have constructed two different views:

° one where we consider that Renault and Nissan are two different groups, with France as  Renault control country and Japan as Nissan control country (left view)

° a second one where Renault and Nissan are consolidated into one group and the corresponding control country is France (right view).

- In both assumptions, Volkswagen group is far ahead of the second group. Volkswagen group has continuously increased its market share, from 18.5 % in 2000 to 25% in 2013, by maintaining its volume in Europe in spite of the crisis. The two French carmakers come in second and third position. But a big difference appears. PSA group has continuously declined since 2002. The Renault group (Renault and Dacia, excluding Nissan), on its side, has taken advantage of the strong increase of Dacia and the good performance in Europe of Nissan. The Renault-Nissan group is ahead of PSA since 2010 and has very well weathered the crisis with a market share increasing from 10,7% in 2006 to 12,1% in 2013 (but without not coming back to the 13;5% market share reached in 2000).