The CEOs of the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler AG said their partnership is advancing in the global marketplace in a number of key areas, including joint production and development of engines, the new Mercedes-Benz Citan van, and in commercial vehicles.

“While our initial collaboration focused strongly on European projects, we are now focusing on synergies in all key markets”, Renault-Nissan Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn said today at an annual media briefing on the partnership. “The largest economies of scale are always global.”

“We will continue to seek out new projects together that make sense for all partners and, most importantly, our customers”, Daimler CEO and Head of Mercedes Benz Cars Dieter Zetsche said.

Daimler and Renault-Nissan are working on four-cylinder gasoline engines, being built at Nissan’s Derchard, Tenn., for use in the Mercedes-Benz C-Class as well as new Infiniti vehicles. Next, both companies are jointly development a new family of shared three- and four-cylinder gasoline engines with turbocharging and direct fuel injection. The companies collaborated on the new Infiniti Q50 and it has a diesel engine and automatic transmission that came from cooperating with Daimler. The new Mercedes-Benz Citan van is on the road now, and Infiniti will offer a vehicle using components from Daimler’s compact car architecture starting in 2015.

For commercial vehicles, Nissan-Renault stated that the Nissan NV350 will be sold under the Mitsubishi Fuso brand in select export markets.

Another project is The smart/Twingo, and both companies stated that production will begin soon on the new two-seater version of the smart at the smart plant in Hambach (France) and of the four-seater smart and the Renault Twingo successor model at the Renault plant in Novo Mesto (Slovenia). The next-generation smart vehicles and the Renault Twingo will be built on a shared architecture but will remain separate platforms, according to both companies.

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