Dongfeng Motor Group Company Limited (DFG), Nissan Motor and AB Volvo are all now in talks about a possible AB Volvo investment in the heavy and medium-duty commercial vehicle business currently included in the Chinese joint venture between DFG and Nissan Motor – Dongfeng Motor Co, Ltd (DFL).
“We will now initiate more in-depth discussions about our possible future cooperation,” stated Xu Ping, Board Chairman of DFG and Jorma Halonen, Executive Vice President and Deputy CEO of AB Volvo.
Nissan Motor will focus on passenger cars and light commercial vehicles and has divested its holding in Nissan Diesel to AB Volvo. Subsequently, DFG, Nissan Motor and AB Volvo initiated discussions at the end of last year with the Chinese authorities on the future possible cooperation of the parties. DFG intends to establish more competitive alliances with Nissan and AB Volvo respectively, in order for all parties to achieve the best development in their specialized field.
To move forward on this issue, DFG, Nissan Motor, DFL and AB Volvo also have signed a non-binding framework agreement with the intention of AB Volvo to invest in the heavy and medium-duty commercial vehicle and engine business and future engine business, while Nissan Motor remains committed to the longterm cooperation with DFG regarding passenger vehicles and the light commercial business.
Where, we wonder, does this leave Volvo’s – apparently rather bad-tempered JV with CNHTC we wonder.
In other news, it seems like the corpses are likely to begin appearing during the fallout from MAN’s bid for Scania. According to reports in Spiegel magazine, the knives are now pointed firmly at a point midway between Hakan Samuelsson’s shoulderblades. VW is not happy with his management of the now seemingly hypothetical integration of its Latin American truck business into a combined MAN – Scania, is planning to nominate two representatives to MAN's supervisory board who will seek to have Samuelsson replaced. We rather rate Samuelsson, and so don’t regard it as likely that he will be out of the picture for long, but does this mark the return of Dr Cordes to the truck business?