Nissan, Renault Seeking Technological Partnership

Nissan Motor and Renault are open to partnership with other companies to equip their vehicles with sophisticated technology, as the automakers race to develop cars of the future, Ogi Redzic, the automakers’ connected vehicles chief, said on Tuesday.

Global automakers are competing with industry rivals and technology firms to develop self-driving cars and mobility services such as car sharing.

The growing use of technology and artificial intelligence is expected to eventually diminish the role of drivers, threatening the traditional model of car ownership, Reuters reported.

“As software used in cars becomes more sophisticated and costly, there will be benefits of partnerships, including with rivals, to develop standardized technology such as mapping services,” said Redzic who heads Renault-Nissan’s Connected Vehicles and Mobility Services division.

“We are in the spirit of collaboration,” Redzic, who joined the alliance earlier this year after working for companies such as Nokia and Motorola, said.

“There are some other companies which would like to build everything in-house, but ... we are willing to partner when it makes sense.”

Nissan and Renault are developing a technology platform that will enable alliance vehicles, including those made by newest member Mitsubishi Motors, to access cloud-based services, including infotainment, car maintenance and remote control operation.

The automakers have been increasing investment in that area, announcing a partnership last month with Microsoft Corp to develop connected car functions powered by Microsoft’s Azure cloud storage service. The pair has also acquired French software developer Sylpheo.

Automakers have been scrambling to partner with tech firms to mitigate the risk that self-driving cars and car sharing will trim demand for car ownership decades down the line.

This year has seen a handful of automakers partnering car sharing service providers, including General Motors Co. and Lyft, Toyota Motor Corp. and Uber Technologies, and Volkswagen Group and Israel’s Gett.

Redzic declined to comment on the alliance’s strategy for car sharing.

Renault has a partnership with Bollore, under which it produces electric vehicles for the French car-sharing service and supplies city cars. It also supplies its Twizy to rental companies.

Redzic said the alliance was open to offering more vehicles to car service providers, noting that fleet sales were “a very healthy part of our business.”

“I don’t know if we would say ‘No’ to someone who wants to operate a service using a subset of our vehicles,” he said.

“The question is whether we are going to operate a service on our own or if we’re going to work with a partner.”