Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi world’s best-selling carmaker in 2017

While neither of these three carmakers cars are particularly setting sales charts on fire in India, globally it’s a completely different story.

The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance sold 10.6 million vehicles worldwide in 2017, making it the highest selling carmaker of the year.

Mitsubishi joined the Renault-Nissan alliance after Nissan acquired a 34 per cent stake in Mitsubishi in late 2016. In 2017, Nissan had record sales of 5.82 million units, Renault sold 3.76 million units and Mitsubishi’s sales stood at 1.03 million globally, making the group's total global sales for the year approximately 10.61 million.

The ongoing massive electrification push in the automotive industry is working wonders for the alliance. Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance sold 540,623 electric vehicles globally through its different brands. Cumulatively, the alliance continues to be the world leader in EV sales, both in passenger vehicle and light commercial vehicle segment. The Nissan Leaf, in fact, remains the world’s bestselling EV with more than 300,000 vehicles sold since its launch in December 2010.

Also, in 2017, Renault continued its streak of being Europe’s largest EV market share holder for the third consecutive year, with a market share of 23.8 per cent. The Renault Zoe had a sales increase of 44 per cent, making it the best-selling EV of the year in Europe. Then there is the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, which has been the most sold plug-in hybrid in UK, Norway and Spain ever since its launch.

The increase in the alliance’s volume was led by China – a key market for Mitsubishi’s ‘drive for growth’ plan. China became Mitsubishi’s largest market in 2017, thanks to the strong demand for the Outlander. Furthermore, Mitsubishi’s performance in the ASEAN region was also strong with an increase of 17 per cent, mostly because of the launch of the new Xpander MPV.

Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi’s robust sales in 2017 successfully eclipsed the Volkswagen Group, which owns more number of brands than the former. Volkswagen Group’s cumulative sales in 2017 stood at 10.53 million units, while Toyota slipped down to the third spot with 10.2 million units sold.

The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance includes 10 automotive marques – Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Infiniti, Renault Samsung Motors, Dacia, Datsun, Alpine, Venucia and Lada.