Daimler, Renault-Nissan Confirm Pickup Truck Project

Daimler AG and the Renault-Nissan Alliance confirm they will jointly develop a Mercedes-Benz midsize pickup truck based on Nissan's NP300 truck architecture.

The partners reiterate that, for now at least, the Mercedes pickup won't be marketed in the U.S.

Daimler and Renault-Nissan will begin making the 1-ton-capacity Mercedes truck at Nissan factories in Barcelona, Spain, and Cordoba, Argentina, by the end of the decade. Those facilities also will produce Nissan's NP300 Navara/Frontier pickup, which currently is built in Mexico and Thailand.

The partners say the Nissan factories in Argentina and Spain will have annual capacity to make 70,000 and 120,000 trucks, respectively, for Mercedes, Nissan and Renault. The companies did not indicate a specific production target for Mercedes.

Daimler and Renault-Nissan already are developing a 1-ton pickup truck, which also borrows from the NP300, for Renault. Production of that vehicle will launch in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 2016. Renault separately plans to introduce a half-ton pickup truck of its own design later this year.