With established automakers facing pressure from new competitors, together with an expected shift in demand toward EVs, the French-Japanese alliance is seeking to deepen cooperation.
Two people who claimed cognizance of the plan told Reuters that the three automakers are expected to announce on Thursday a plan to invest more than 20 billion euros ($23 billion) over the next five years on EV development, with the alliance expected to come up with 30 new battery EVs underpinned by five common platforms by 2030.
According to the two people with knowledge of the move, this will add to the 10 billion euros the trio has invested on electrification.
The plan coined as the ‘Alliance to 2030’ seeks to show “intensified cooperation” among the automakers, highlighting a “shared vision on electrification and connected mobility,” one source said.
According to the sources, the five common platforms will cover 90 percent of EVs expected to be developed and launched by 2030 by the companies.
They further claimed that the three-firm alliance has already developed and even partly deployed four common EV platforms.
One of the four platforms reportedly underpins Electric vehicles like the Nissan’s yet to be released Ariya and Megane EV from Renault: another platform reportedly supports affordable no-frills cars by Nissan and its China market partner Dongfeng, as well as for Renault’s Dacia brand. The other two are platforms for micro minis, called “kei cars” in Japan, and light commercial vehicles.
The sources further revealed that the alliance will by mid-decade aim to deploy a fifth common platform for compact EVs designed by Renault.
Nissan on its own has used its CMFB-EV platform and other standardized components to electrify the Nissan Micra compact car, with Renault on the other hand expected to come up with a similar EV car based on the same platform, while the Micra EV is projected to be released by the mid-2020s, according to the sources.
To make the EVs affordable, the automakers hope to make it akin to gasoline-fuelled vehicles of similar size, the sources said.
Common batteries and other key components are expected to be used in the production, with the alliance planning to jointly invest in capacity to produce in France, Britain, China and Japan a total of 220 gigawatt hours of battery capacity by 2030 under the plan, the sources said.
The sources further claimed that the alliance hopes to halve manufacturing costs by standardizing and sharing batteries, while the alliance expects to share solid-state lithium-ion battery technology, which Nissan has been developing.
It remains unclear if the leaders of the alliance will discuss hybrids as part of their 2030 plan.
Ayoola Faseyi, an Abuja based Journalist with interest in Technology and Politics. He is a versatile writer with articles in many renowned News Journals.
He is the Co-Founder of media brand, The Vent Republic.
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