Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Crowned Best-Selling Automaker In 2018

Total sales of light commercial vehicles rise 13.5 percent to 2 million, and cumulative sales of EVs are up 34 percent to 725,000 vehicles. Most of this progress was achieved with the help of the Common Module Family, which underpins more nameplates than ever.

Next week, the Clio V will transition to the CMF-B, which will enable hybridization starting next year. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids have been confirmed, including for the Captur subcompact crossover and Megane compact hatchback.

In regard to sales of alliance members, Renault and Mitsubishi are up by 3.2 and 18.3 percent compared to 2017. Despite selling more than Renault and Mitsubishi combined, Nissan sales are down 2.8 percent to 5,653,683 vehicles worldwide.

As part of the Alliance 2022 mid-term plan, the alliance forecasts annual synergies of more than €10 billion by the end of 2022. No fewer than 40 vehicles “with different levels of autonomy” and 12 electric vehicles will be launched during the plan.

By markets, Renault is most popular in France, Nissan in China, and Mitsubishi in Indonesia. Taken together, the alliance is strongest in China (1.9 million vehicles), the United States of America (1.6 million), France (763,984), Japan (727,823), and Russia (648,795).

Expectations for 2019 are high, but nevertheless, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi expects to post another sales record. On a related, care to guess how did the competition fare in 2018?

The Volkswagen Group, excluding heavy trucks from MAN and Scania, managed to sell 10.6 million vehicles. Toyota announced 10.39 million, including Lexus and Daihatsu but without Hino Motors trucks.

If you’re curious which is the best-selling nameplate of 2018, that would be the Toyota Corolla in all of its forms and flavors with 1,181,445 units sold. Next up, we have the Ford F-Series pickup truck (1,080,757), Toyota RAV4 (837,624), Honda Civic (823,169), and Volkswagen Tiguan (791,275).