and much more collaboration. The core engineering is common to all—that’s why the different organizations can work together so closely, and why we’re more efficient today. While each engineering center remains responsible for meeting the specific tastes or specifications that its local market demands, we have global oversight to ensure consistency, with NTC supervising overall resource management and facility investment. We are building on these strengths through greater collaboration with our suppliers—our project partners—and doing it much further upstream. For example, we are creating a facility at the NATC where we can disclose our plans to suppliers during the very early planning stages. This means we have to be much more open than before, but in return we will gain a great deal from the ideas our partners bring.  The Alliance with Renault is another major strength for Nissan R&D. We identify areas of mutual interest and decide which party will develop specific projects. Our basic operating principle is to avoid duplicated efforts. We can work separately, or together if there is mutual interest in the development. For example, we have studied fuel-cell vehicles—FCVs—as well as, advanced materials, safety, and other areas together. Our shared goal is to maximize the benefits so we will rank among the top three entities in technology worldwide. R&D Investment Patent Research Paper OUR WORK 500 400 (Billion yen) (% of net revenue) 300 200 100 0 5 4 3 2 1 0 ’00 ’01 ’02 ’03 ’04 232 262 300 354 398 3.8% 4.2% 4.4% 4.8% 4.6% 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0 ’99 ’00 ’01 ’02 ’03 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 ’00 ’01 ’02 ’03 ’04 The number of research papers presented at JSME (The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers), JSAE (The Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan), SAE (The Society of Automotive Engineers), FISITA (The International Federation of Automotive Engineering Societies) Testing at Nissan Advanced Crash Laboratory CARWINGS telematics system Aluminum parts Nissan Annual Report 2004 45