Automotive News Europe — 2024-03-27
Automotive Industry
The alliance partners said market conditions and regulations were not yet in place to launch electric vehicles in India, the world's third-largest auto market.
Renault Group and Nissan will invest up to $700 m to develop and build four new compact cars in India, but joint EV models are on hold at the moment, top executives from both companies said.
The new models will be five- and seven-seat SUVs for each automaker, based on a new generation of the Renault CMF-B architecture.
The announcement on Wednesday by Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida and Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo represents a scaling back of objectives from February 2023, when Renault and Nissan revealed a new strategy for India, a growing market that is now the world's third-largest after China and the US -- but has proved hard to crack for foreign automakers.
At the time, Renault and Nissan said they would build six models, including a small EV for each brand. But de Meo and Uchida said that global market conditions had changed, and any future EV strategy in India would depend on the government having a comprehensive plan to support the transition to electrification.
“We’re rethinking our strategy” on EVs for India, de Meo said at a press event in Chennai that also attended by Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard. “We want to come up with a sustainable plan. We need an ecosystem and public support to make it work.”
Nissan invests in Ampere
Renault in January scrapped plans to list its EV unit Ampere, citing unfavorable market conditions for EV makers.
Uchida said Wednesday, 27 March 2024, that even though Ampere will not be listed publicly at this time, Nissan was still planning on an investment.
"We want to further our growth in Europe, we want to further have the leverage from the alliance," Uchida said. "Regardless of the IPO, we are looking at Ampere,” he said. “We are already discussing our investment in Ampere.”
The two automakers, which have rebalanced their alliance to just 15% cross shareholdings, have a factory in Chennai called RNAIPL, as well as a joint technical center called RNTCBI that develops vehicles, software and other technologies.
The alliance has gradually pared back its joint activities, including dissolving the huge Renault-Nissan Purchasing Organization, to focus on “operational” projects on a case-by-case basis, such as the new models for India.
India exports
Nissan plans to expand exports from the Chennai factory to 100,000 annually, Uchida said. Cars built there include three minicars on the Renault CMF-A/A+ platform: The Renault Triber and Kiger, and the Nissan Magnite.
De Meo said there was no timetable for the new models but said it would be in less than five years. They would probably be related to two new models coming from Dacia, the Duster small SUV and the Bigster compact SUV.
Renault share drops in India
The Indian market is dominated by Maruti Suzuki, with a 43% share in February, followed by Mahindra and Mahindra, Hyundai and Tata. There were 5,079,985 sales (passenger cars and commercial vehicles) in 2023, an 8% increase over 2022, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers said.
Renault had about 6,600 sales in February and Nissan about 2,200, given them a combined market share of about 2%, figures from the automakers show, although Renault had the highest sales figures of any European brand there.
Despite recent high-profile launches including the Kiger and Triber, de Meo acknowledged that Renault was at a “low point” for sales in India. February sales were about 40% lower than in the same month in 2023.
“We’re not announcing we’d like to overtake Maruti Suzuki in terms of market share. These are big boys” that are investing tens of billions in India, he said.
“We need a sustainable business to justify the presence of our plant and technical center, and also to propose something different for Indian customers that isn’t only focused on providing the lowest-cost mobility,” he said.