The ongoing Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance/Ghosn saga was in the news this week and our story about Nissan’s CEO making clear the automaker did not want to move closer to the French partner was the top read for many people.
Reports had been circulating in Japan that Paris was seeking a new capital tie-up between Renault and Nissan that would more closely integrate the two alliance partners. However, it was also reported Nissan CEO Hirota Saikawa had suggested Nissan was not ready to discuss such a proposal. Some analysts had suggested that moves by ex-Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn to take Nissan closer to full merger with Renault and resultant tensions between executives in the two companies partly explained the charges of financial misconduct levelled at Ghosn and his subsequent ousting as Nissan chairman. Ghosn remained in detention in Tokyo ahead of a trial.
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There’s some sympathy here at just-auto for Ghosn and the way he reportedly is being held in a bleak, cold cell and fed badly, apparently in an attempt to force a confession out of him. He was denied bail again this week as Japanese media reports said the decision by the Tokyo district court came in spite of Ghosn’s offer to wear an ankle tag. The ruling made it likely Ghosn would stay in detention until his trial and also that he would be replaced as chairman and CEO at Renault. Reports said bail was rarely granted by Japanese courts ahead of trial – unless there was a confession. Ghosn had denied wrongdoing.
The other shoe soon dropped. We next reported Renault had called a board meeting for 24 January which would reportedly seal Ghosn’s replacements as Renault chairman and CEO. Reports suggested outgoing Michelin chief Jean-Dominique Senard would be named as chairman while caretaker CEO Thierry Bollore would be made CEO. And so it proved, as Renault confirmed Ghosn’s resignation from his top functions and appointed Senard as chairman and Bollore as CEO, as expected. Renault also said it would now split the functions of chairman and CEO to provide a new governance structure. “In addition to all the functions normally performed by the chairman, the new chairman of Renault will have to evaluate and, if necessary, change Renault’s governance in order to ensure the transition to the new structure,” the automaker said in a statement. Nissan Motor then said it was preparing to hold an extraordinary shareholders meeting in mid April to vote on removing former chairman Ghosn and director Greg Kelly from the board.
In other news, there was an interesting technical development at Hyundai concerning airbags as it announced future availability in its Hyundai and Kia cars of the (claimed) world’s first multi-collision airbag system that significantly improves performance in such accidents. Multi-collision accidents are those in which the primary impact is followed by collisions with secondary objects, such as trees, electrical posts or other vehicles, which occurs in three out of every 10 accidents. Current airbag systems do not offer secondary protection when the initial impact is insufficient to cause them to deploy. However, the multi-collision airbag system allows airbags to deploy effectively upon a secondary impact by calibrating the status of the vehicle and the occupants.
Prodrive Composites has developed a process for manufacturing recyclable composite components that can satisfy future end-of-life requirements without compromising the performance of the original parts. To learn more, we caught up with chief engineer John McQuilliam.
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By GlobalDataJaguar Land Rover has developed a system that projects the direction of travel onto the road ahead of a self-driving vehicle, so other other road users know what it is going to do next. The intelligent technology beams a series of projections onto the road to show the future intentions of the vehicle – for example stopping and turning left or right – as part of research into how people can develop their trust in autonomous technology. In the future, the projections could even be used to share obstacle detection and journey updates with pedestrians. Clever and very simple.
Ford, which has had a torrid time in Europe recently, as reflected in its 2018 results out this week, is to revive the Puma nameplate, previously used on a nice little coupe variant of the Fiesta, as a new small SUV built at its Craiova, Romania, plant according to local media. Online news publication romania-insider.com said production of the new model would begin next autumn and would require some 1,700 new hires in addition to the 4,400 employees already working at the plant (which builds the EcoSport SUV for the European market). This is the one-time Daewoo plant that initially made the B-Max after Ford acquired it.
We’ve had some great future model analysis this week – a two-parter covering Audi (shaking in your boots, Elon?) as its fightback begins and, not unrelated, Porsche.
Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
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