Renault Group and Nissan are in talks to revive their faltering alliance following leadership changes at the two automakers and struggles at Nissan, The Financial Times reported.
Citing people familiar with the discussions, the FT reported on November 17th that Luca de Meo’s departure last summer had spurred the talks. De Meo was replaced by François Provost, who was head of partnerships at Renault Group before his promotion.
Change of guard
Renault took a controlling stake in Nissan in 1999, eventually holding 43% of the automaker’s shares. Carlos Ghosn, then a young Renault executive, was dispatched by Renault CEO Louis Schweitzer to turn Nissan into a profitable company. Under Ghosn, the Renault-Nissan Alliance became one of the top automakers by volume and was seen as a model for global collaboration.
Renault now holds about 36% of Nissan shares, although 19% of that is in a trust it is seeking to sell down, with 15% voting rights. Nissan holds 15% of Renault.
De Meo had sought to reinvest Renault’s proceeds from selling its Nissan stake to bolster Renault, the FT said, citing the sources. Nissan’s falling share price has complicated that plan; earlier this year, Renault wrote off €9.5 billion of its Nissan stake.
New opportunity
According to The Financial Times, de Meo’s departure to run the luxury group Kering has created an opportunity for Provost to revisit the alliance.
Currently, collaborations between the two are mainly limited to single projects, such as an agreement for Renault to build the new Micra EV for Nissan at a French factory. The two no longer share a common management board or purchasing organization.
A Renault spokesperson said that Provost and Espinosa were in regular discussions about how each company could support the other, calling it a “good sign” for the future of the relationship, the FT reported.
“The alliance is a key pillar of our business,” Nissan said recently, adding that the two groups were working on “several high-value strategic projects.”
Nissan pivoting to hybrids?
Meanwhile, Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa is preparing a ‘full blast’ of new products in the US. The embattled Japanese automaker aims to expand its hybrid offerings into new segments through 2030, with the possibility of an electrified V6 truck.
“Next year we should be in a position to grow our sales,” Espinosa said last week. “The fact that we have these new product lines coming and having a full blast next year is definitely something that’s going to help.”
The push is critical to Espinosa’s revival plan and is part of what he calls “shifting into second gear”, a pivot from cost-cutting and factory closures to growth based on product and technology. The US market will play a significant role in this scheme: last year, Nissan’s US sales grew by 2.8% to 924,800 vehicles, but in the peak selling year of 2017, the brand reached deliveries of 1.6 million.
By 2030, Nissan will have US hybrids in the compact, midsize, and full-size segments, Espinosa said. This year, Nissan’s market share declined to 5.8% (from 6.0% in 2024), but sales quality is improving.
“We have reprioritized the mix of our business for two reasons,” said the CEO. “We don’t want to keep growing volume for volume’s sake; the overall mix is better. We want to start growing from there with a healthy base.” Nissan definitely seeks higher-quality sales, with a tilt toward retail over fleet in the US.
Due to Trump’s tariffs, Nissan won’t shut down its US plants. “It will not make a lot of sense to stop a plant in the US when you have tariffs,” Espionsa explained. “What could have been seen as a problem 18 months ago is now a strength that we have because of the presence and the capability that we have in the US. It’s a good position to be in.”
Nissan’s restructuring plan involves shuttering 7 of the 17 global manufacturing plants, and the goal is to slash vehicle capacity by almost 3 million by March 2028 (at the end of the fiscal year). Espinosa said the global capacity reduction was on track and that Nissan would announce the seventh plant to be closed by the end of the fiscal year on March 31st, 2026.
