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Renault-Nissan extend CMF architecture to entry level cars

18th July 2013, 13:30 by JayPrashanth

After announcing the Common Module Family (CMF) architecture last year, Japanese automaker Nissan revealed that it would share this architecture with its automaking alliance partner Renault, earlier this year. A new announcement coming from Mr. Carlos Ghosn, the Chairman and CEO of Renault-Nissan, indicates that the CMF architecture will be embodied in low cost cars aimed at emerging markets of the world through the CMF-A platform.

India, one of the bigger emerging markets of the world and one that has a big Renault-Nissan operation, will play a key part in the CMF-A platform. The CMF-A platform will be shared across three brands: Nissan, Renault and Datsun. Given the fact that the first CMF-A car will roll out of Renault-Nissan's joint manufacturing facility at Oragadam, India, in 2015, the Datsun i2 and the upcoming Renault A-Entry could be the two cars that are underpinned by the CMF-A platform.

The Renault small car, code-named the A-Entry, will sit below the Renault Pulse (a badge engineered Nissan Micra) in terms of price and positioning. The Datsun i2 is expected to be positioned between the 2-3 lakh rupee mark, under the recently unveiled Datsun GO hatchback. The CMF platform embodies the principles of the common module family architecture that Nissan announced last year.

Click here for a deeper overview of the CMF architecture.

A key aspect of the CMF-A architecture is that it will be used on low cost cars mainly aimed at the young and first time car buyers. CMF-A cars will initially be sold in India. A good response to these cars could lead to Renault and Nissan exporting this cars to emerging markets across the world. Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa are the few other emerging markets that could see CMF-A cars being launched.

Development of cars based on the CMF-A platform has already begun at Renault-Nissan Technology Business Center situated at Chennai, India. Apart from development, heavy local sourcing and local production are the two other aspects of the CMF-A platform. The Renault-Nissan factory in India will be used for producing CMF-A cars and the Franco-Japanese automaking alliance plans to invest 2.5 Billion US Dollars in India over the next 5 years.

The fresh bout of investments will be used by Renault-Nissan towards research and development of new cars in India and for the expansion of production capacity at its Oragadam factory. Renault-Nissan is aiming at a total car production of 500,000 units at Oragadam by 2015. This production volume will cater both to the domestic markets and exports.

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