The Renault-Nissan Alliance is creating a light commercial vehicle business unit to expand its global presence in this growing segment.
By unleashing the full potential of Renault’s van expertise and Nissan’s truck know-how in key markets, the Alliance intends to grow its light commercial vehicle sales worldwide.
In the spirit of the Alliance, partners will leverage complementary markets and products while maintaining their own brand identity, sales and revenue.
“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.
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 last 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 will also handle Nissan’s body-on-frame SUVs, including the Nissan Armada and Nissan Patrol.
Born in Dehradun, India, Ashwani Gupta graduated from Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College, India, and obtained a diploma from INSEAD Business School in France.
He has been vice president of Renault’s Light Commercial Vehicle Division since 2014, where he oversees the automaker’s worldwide LCV business.
He joined Renault in 2006 as general manager of purchasing at Renault India in Mumbai. In 2008, he moved to the Renault Nissan Purchasing Organization in Paris as global supplier account manager for braking systems.
He joined Renault Nissan B.V. in 2009 as deputy general manager, global purchasing. In 2011, Gupta was appointed global program director for Datsun programs at Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. in Japan, where he led the product development to launch in India, Russia, Indonesia and South Africa.
He started his career in 1992 in engineering and purchasing in the private sector and later moved to management positions in the automotive industry.
In 2016, Groupe Renault sold 443,931 LCVs globally, including Avtovaz. The top-selling models in 2016 were Kangoo with 118,200 units, Master with 91,900 units and Trafic with 81,600 units.
Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. sold 815,490 LCVs globally. The top-selling models in 2016 were NP300 Navara with 196,257 units, Frontier with 102,497 units and NV200 with 54,118 units.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. sold 248,000 LCVs globally. The top-selling model in 2016 was Triton/L200 with 125,000 units.
The Renault-Nissan Alliance is a strategic partnership between Groupe Renault of France and Japan-based Nissan Motor and Mitsubishi Motors.
The automakers combined sold 9.96 million vehicles in nearly 200 countries in 2016 – more than one in nine vehicles worldwide.
The Alliance has strategic collaborations with other automakers, including Germany’s Daimler and China’s Dongfeng.
It also owns a majority stake in the joint venture that controls Russia’s top automaker, AVTOVAZ.
The Alliance is the industry leader in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive and connectivity features and services on a range of affordable vehicles.
