Nissan Motor Co. and Daimler AG announced Friday that they will work together to develop compact cars at a new plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico.
The Nissan Infiniti Model will be the first car produced by the partnership and will be available in 2017, with Mercedes-Benz models to be released in 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal. Both companies will invest $1.4 billion in the project and share planning, development and manufacturing for Nissan and Mercedes vehicles.
The partnership was announced after months of rumors that Daimler and Nissan would team up to build compact cars at the plant in Aguascalientes.
"We are putting our successful partnership on the next level in Aguascalientes by combining the knowledge and abilities of both our companies - Daimler and Nissan - in one factory," said Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of Daimler.
Zetsche and Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault-Nissan, declined to mention the specific models that will be made at the plant while speaking to reporters Friday via satellite from France and Germany, Automotive News reported.
Ghosn said the models will also be built separately by various partners in other factories around the world. Zetsche also stated that Mercedes and Infiniti are working closely to make sure future cars won't have the same design and specifications.
Ghosn added that the engines for the new cars will come from different sources, such as the U.S. and areas outside the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He mentioned, however, that the Nissan and Daimler have not finalized all of the project's details, Automotive News reported.
The automakers said they plan to bring 5,700 jobs, which include engineers, line workers and support staff, to the plant when it operates at full capacity in 2021.
"Joint development of compact premium vehicles and joint production in Aguascalientes together represent one of the largest projects between the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler," Ghosn said. "It also shows how our collaboration, which began in Europe, has become global in scope."
