PARIS -- Nissan Motor Corp. will begin receiving some technology from the product-sharing partnership between Daimler and the Renault-Nissan Alliance, a senior Nissan executive says.
Nissan is in line to receive a version of the nine-speed Daimler transmission that has just been announced for Infiniti. Nissan also will receive a three-cylinder engine from the cross-development work, says Jacques Verdonck, director of the strategic cooperation with Daimler for the Renault-Nissan Alliance.
Nissan has not revealed how the powertrain components will be used. A turbocharged three-cylinder engine is appearing on the new jointly developed Smart and Renault city cars.
Nissan has been the odd man out in the partnership, which has benefited Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Smart and Infiniti over the past five years.
The partnership has focused heavily on Europe, but that is changing as the Daimler-Nissan arrangement intensifies and the partners put more projects on the table for consideration.
This year, the partners moved forward on two significant North American fronts. Infiniti opened an engine plant in Decherd, Tennessee, that will produce small-displacement Infiniti and Mercedes engines for North America and other markets. And the partners announced a major assembly plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, which they will co-own, to build up to 300,000 compact luxury vehicles a year starting in 2017.
The global initiative is helping the partners in diverse markets.
Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn and Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said at a joint press conference this month here that "everything" is on the table for possible cooperation. Each executive emphasized that the technical cooperation must not hurt his brands in any way.
