Renault, Nissan and Daimler join hands with swaping stakes

Car makers Nissan, Renault  and Daimler said in a joint statement on Wednesday that they are going to swap stakes and will jointly develop cars as targeted at gaining scale and sharing costs. While the Daimler will take 3.1 percent shareholdings in Renault and Nissan, the 1.55 percent of the Daimler will be hold by Nissan-Renault JV, as per the statement of the company.

The stake of Renault in Nissan will went down to 43.2 percent from 44.3 percent after this joint venture. All of these three car makers are planning to cooperate on electric cars, passenger cars and light commercial vehicles and will develop and share diesel and gasoline engines for Daimler's Smart small-cars, said Nissan.

Daimler, which owns luxury Mercedes-Benz in India, also has a struggling small car brand named as 'Smart'. After this tie-up the company is all set to benefit from Renault's small-car expertise, while at the same time Renault and Nissan will be benefited from Daimler's engine expertise.

Besides this partnership, Nissan-Renault JV is also in the process of launching an ultra low cost car, in partnership with Bajaj Auto. Both of the companies have already invested heavily on their plant in Chennai to produce this small car. It is expected that the car will be launched in India by year 2012.