Mitsubishi, Nissan and Renault readying "sales offensive"

Mitsubishi, Nissan and Renault will soon begin separate tilts for more sales in Australia, having delivered sub-par performances in the current marketplace.

Carlos Ghosn, the global boss of the three brands that recently formed a new alliance, delivered the blunt assessment during a visit of Australian operations this week.

Nissan and Mitsubishi are both outside the top five brands in market share and with Renault languishing well outside the top 10, Ghosn revealed it’s time for a shake-up.

“To be fair, I consider that each one of these brands is not doing their fair share to contribute to the Australian market,” he said.

“You can expect to see Mitsubishi, Nissan and Renault to be much more on the offensive in the Australian market, not only for the product offer, but the technology offer and dealer services.”

Chief among Ghosn’s objectives is to leverage the alliance’s strong global sales. As it stands, the Mitsubishi-Nissan-Renault grouping is on track to become a top three market seller globally in 2017, alongside Toyota and the Volkswagen Group.

“If you take the alliance market share in Australia, which is about 13 per cent, we have [room for improvement],” he said.

“In a certain way, I want to encourage growth. To listen and see how we can better perform. I see it more as an opportunity than a blame.

“I see it as an encouragement to be much more on the offensive in Australia for the three brands. European presence can be much bigger than what Renault today enjoys and I think both Japanese brands can do much better in my opinion.”

Ghosn identified the alliance’s position as the number one global seller in electric cars as a key strength moving forward. He wants to converge on that success in order to become a dominant player in autonomous vehicles.

“For car-makers, scale is very important. The bigger you are the more you can invest in these technologies and the more you can share these technologies,” he said.

“We may end up this year as number one (globally) -- this is not an objective, it’s a consequence. If you want to remain in this position, you need to ramp up innovation in the industry.

“We are already in electric cars, we obviously want to maintain this advantage. The competition for autonomous cars is on. Car-makers are starting a lot of advancement but mass marketing hasn’t started yet. When mass market starts, we are developing everything to be the top makers of autonomous cars.”

Before the electric car can truly take off, Ghosn revealed a key hurdle: government subsidies.

Ghosn said the alliance has not directly asked the government for assistance, but made it clear that subsidies are required in order to mass-market the electric car. Currently, electric cars comprise less than one per cent of sales in Australia.

“It’s very simple. It is very difficult to make the electric car attractive to the consumer without government subsidies,” he said.

“When you jump-start the sales [with subsidies] and you get the scale you need, then you can be on your own. That’s mainly why in markets where governments are supporting electric cars [demand is stronger].

“Electric car sales are not driven by consumer demand. They are driven by emission regulations and state and federal governments.”