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Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s leading automotive alliance, has announced that its member companies sold a combined total of 10,756,875 units in the 12 months to December 31, 2018 with China, U.S. and France as the leading markets. The Alliance maintained its position as the world leader in volume sales of passenger and light commercial vehicles.
Unit sales for 2018 rose 1.4 percent year-over-year amid continued strong demand for vehicles including the Renault Clio, Captur and Sandero, the Nissan X-Trail/Rogue and Sentra/Sylphy and Mitsubishi’s Eclipse Cross and XPANDER.
Sales of more vehicles utilising the Common Module Family (CMF) architecture – a key pillar of the Alliance 2022 mid-term plan – also increased pace in 2018. This included inaugural sales of the Renault Kwid in more international markets along with increased production of the Nissan Frontier pickup truck, which shares architecture with Renault and Mercedes models.
The Alliance members saw particularly strong demand for light commercial vehicles, with solidly improved sales of the Renault Kangoo, Master and Trafic, the Nissan Navara and Terra, and the Mitsubishi Triton. A core part of the Alliance strategy is to maximize synergies through cross-development and cross-manufacturing to increase sales and market presence of member-company LCVs around the world.
In 2018, the Alliance maintained its commitment to zero-emission vehicles. Its leadership in the segment with cumulative sales of 724,905 electric vehicles since 2010 was driven by demand for the Renault ZOE and Nissan LEAF, among other EVs.
Of the Alliance member companies, Groupe Renault’s sales were up 3.2 percent to 3,884,295 units in calendar year 2018. Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. sold 5,653,683 units worldwide, down 2.8 percent in 2018. Mitsubishi Motors Corporation sold 1,218,897 units worldwide, up 18.3 percent year-over-year.
Alliance 2022 six-year plan
As part of the Alliance 2022 mid-term plan, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi is continuing to forecast that annual synergies will exceed €10 billion by the end of 2022. The member companies will also increase commonality, targeting nine million units based on four common platforms. The plan will also extend the use of common powertrains to 75 percent of total sales. In addition, 12 new zero-emission electric vehicles will be launched during the plan, and 40 vehicles will be introduced with different levels of autonomy.
