[News-Oxcart Network]
The Renault-Nissan alliance is in crisis.
A few days ago, Renault CEO Luca de Mayo said that the company's business in the Chinese market has not improved significantly, and perhaps a new path should be opened in the future.
At the same time, Luca de Mayo questioned the previous "leader-follower strategy" and argued that cooperation with Nissan and Chinese joint ventures should be stopped.
In May 2020, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance released a new partnership strategy, according to the "Leader-Follower Strategy" content, the alliance will designate one member to be the "leader" in a specific model, dominant technology and geographical region, and the other members will become "followers". According to the plan, Nissan will become a "leader" in China, North America and Japan, while Renault will shift its focus to Europe, Russia, South America and North Africa, and Mitsubishi will focus on Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Luca de Mayo made it clear that "[previously] Renault's entire strategy in China was wrong," seeming to be critical of Nissan, "It's not Nissan's fault, they're the leaders of the Chinese market, but they're not here for charity." ”
As of press time, Nissan has not made a formal response to this, but its CEO Makoto Uchida said that the alliance will always maintain a strategic partnership.
In 2021, Renault will sell only 19,000 new vehicles in the Chinese market, and its market share in China is only 0.08%. At the same time, Renault commented on the decline in Nissan's sales in China by 5.2% to 1.38 million units, arguing that "Nissan could not save Renault"
Although it has become a "follower" in the Chinese market, Renault still hopes to further seek deep cultivation in the Chinese market. Perhaps believing that Nissan and even the alliance had given him little help, Renault began to look for new outlets.
In August 2021, Renault and Geely launched a cooperation in the Chinese market, the two sides will jointly develop Renault brand hybrid models based on geely holding group's advanced platform technology. In the Korean market, the two companies will cooperate based on the CMA architecture of Lynk & Co's energy-saving platform to jointly develop models suitable for the Korean market.
Professor Ji Xuehong, director of the Automotive Innovation Industry Research Center of North China University of Technology, told Chinatown that as a global automobile group, Geely's CMA architecture has been very mature, and one of the advantages of platformization is cost control, which can share the cost of research and development to a certain extent. For Renault, using such a mature and adaptable platform to the Asian market not only saves development time, but also saves investment costs.
Affected by multiple factors such as the epidemic and chips, Renault lost $9.1 billion in 2020, and its development was once difficult, and the opening of Geely's CMA architecture may give Renault more room for turning in a critical period of transformation. According to the "Renaulution Plan", Renault will withdraw 24 products by 2025, including at least 10 pure electric vehicles, and will develop locally suitable models for the Chinese market.
Obviously, Renault's transformation attempt has been very strong, and after overturning the previous "leader-follower strategy", how will Renault move forward in the Chinese market? Achieving new breakthroughs in the new energy vehicle track with Chinese brands may be more secure than pinning on alliance members.