- Nissan announced the closure of its Spanish factory in Barcelona which operates only at 37% of its capacity in 2019 (against 55% in 2018), due to the shutdown of the Nissan Pulsar, Renault Trafic and Nissan NV200 with combustion engine, and to the failure of the Renault Alaskan and Mercedes X-Class pickups derived from the Nissan Navara. Pick-ups are not in high demand in Europe, so production of the Nissan Navaracould be transferred to Thailand, where Nissan is already producing it for the Asia-Pacific region.

- But the Barcelona site is only one part of Nissan’s objective to reduce its global capacity by around 20%, or about 1.2 million vehicles per year.

- Nissan has also announced that its global range will decrease from 69 models today to 55 models in 2023. Nissan is likely to focus on its major markets, such as North America and China, and to leave the European market to Renault, where it is in a better position.

- In this context, the Nissan Micra (54,000 sales in 2019 against an annual target of 130,000 units) is seriously threatened, Nissan could then focuses in Europe on the C and D segment models (sedans and SUVs).

- The three entities of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi group (Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi) have decided to increase their synergies in terms of product design, production and marketing.

- In recent years, the sharing of platforms and engines had certainly increased compared to the beginning of the 2010s, but it still remained very room for improvement. Indeed, the Nissan Micra produced in Flins did not use the platform of the Renault Clio and the Nissan Leaf was different from the Renault Zoé in terms of engine and batteries. As for Mitsubishi, no synergy had yet been established since the entry of this brand in the group.

- The development and production of common platforms, engines and batteries between Renault and Nissan is difficult and slow within the group. In addition to culture differences and brakes to abandon technologies in favour of those developed by other entities of the group, the range of vehicles and bodies styles produced responding to markets with very different typologies (USA, Japan, Europe , China, Middle East), makes in some cases technologies difficult to share. And this without addressing the questions of politics within the group, where the search for consensus and balance was dominant (with its advantages and inconvenient). By comparison, PSA was able to deploy its platforms more quickly within the Opel range, because it operates “only” on the European market (therefore at a smaller scale), because the range and the bodies between PSA and Opel is very similar and finally because the acquisition of PSA by Opel occurred in a renewal cycle of models favourable to the introduction of new platforms (3008 / GrandLand, 208 / Corsa…).

- Nevertheless, within the Renault-Nissan group, synergies exist naturally and operate at levels invisible to the general public. For instance, the definition and choice of materials used (interior, exterior, powetrain, etc.) is common within the group. With the recent sales and financial results announced by the group, the technological challenges (electrification, ADAS, etc.), and the uncertainty of the markets at a global level, the reinforcement of this synergy is becoming increasingly essential for each of the group's entities.