The Renault-Nissan Alliance is creating a light commercial vehicle business unit to expand its global presence in the growing segment.
The Alliance intends to grow its light commercial vehicle sales worldwide through utilizing the full potential of Renault’s van expertise and Nissan’s truck know-how in key markets. In the spirit of the Alliance, the partners will leverage complementary markets and products while maintaining their own brand identities, sales and revenues.
“The combination of Renault, Nissan and the early collaboration with Mitsubishi Motors in a single Alliance LCV Business Unit will boost sales and deliver greater synergies,” said Alliance Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn. “With this move, we plan to expand our market leadership by accelerating our performance in current and new, high-growth markets, based on each company’s core products and market knowledge, and driven by customer needs.”
The Renault-Nissan LCV Business Unit will be led by Ashwani Gupta as Alliance senior vice president. He will report to Carlos Ghosn. He has been vice president of Renault’s Light Commercial Vehicle Division since 2014, where he oversees the automaker’s worldwide LCV business.
The unit will continue to maximize cross-development and cross-manufacturing and is expected to deliver further synergies in costs and technology. Renault and Nissan have established cross-production of vans and trucks over the past several years; for example, the Nissan NV300 van is built on the Renault Trafic platform; the Nissan NV400 van is built on the Renault Master platform; and the Renault Alaskan pickup is built on the Nissan Navara platform. The new Renault-Nissan LCV Business Unit also will handle Nissan’s body-on-frame SUVs, including the Nissan Armada and Nissan Patrol.
