The governing board is working “very satisfactorily,” made up of responsible members who back the alliance and want to make it a success, Senard, 66, told reporters in Paris on Thursday. Nissan’s governance has also been revolutionized and now has a properly functioning board and executives who favor the partnership, he added.

A next step will be the naming of a new chief executive officer for Renault, which is expected relatively soon, the chairman said.

The future of the partnership was thrown into turmoil over the past year after the arrest of Ghosn, who led both carmakers and headed the alliance that also includes Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Detained in Tokyo in November 2018 and charged with financial misconduct, Ghosn fled Japan at the end of last month to escape trial. He has denied the charges.

In a wide-ranging 1 1/2-hour discussion, Senard said he was “surprised and shocked” by a report in the Financial Times this week that Nissan, since Ghosn’s escape, had accelerated secret contingency planning for a potential split with its French partner.

“It’s fake news, malicious and goes totally against the reality,” said Senard, who added that the partnership is being rebuilt with new top management at both companies.

The board of the alliance will decide on new, common projects at a meeting this month, and the partnership is moving toward greater convergence of platforms and technology in the face of the massive investment needed to develop new cars, said Senard.

While he declined to comment on Ghosn’s escape or his subsequent attacks on the performance of the alliance at a press conference last week, he didn’t hold back on criticism, describing a “toxic” atmosphere that long reigned between Renault and Nissan stemming from a lack of decision making.

Senard also had strong words for RNBV, the entity that led the alliance, which he said was supposed to be the nerve center of the partnership but was instead an expensive and totally inefficient operation.

Bloomberg reported Monday that since last year Nissan has been exploring the pros and cons of sustaining the alliance, particularly when it comes to engineering and technology sharing, according to a person familiar with the matter. It’s unclear how feasible any separation would be given that Renault is Nissan’s biggest shareholder and has been pushing to repair ties.

Nissan and Renault both denied that the alliance would be dissolved.

Ghosn held the partnership together for years despite a lopsided shareholding relationship favoring Renault that was put in place when Nissan was financially ailing. The French carmaker owns 43% of Nissan, with full voting rights, while the Japanese company holds only a 15% stake in Renault and lacks the ability to vote its shares. Yet Renault’s power within Nissan is crimped by a shareholder agreement known as Rama.

“I’ve never seen a structure like this, with one group having 43% of the other but in reality having no legal power,” Senard said. “It’s baroque and completely extraordinary.”

While changing the shareholding structure “isn’t the priority,” he said it could evolve in the future and also take in new partners.

“The alliance is 20 years old and really needed a serious overhaul,” he said, adding that the “anguish” he felt last year is over and he hopes to be able to show in 2020 that the partners are doing better.

Detroit’s three automakers are bracing for a slower year of U.S. sales by tapping the brakes on production. And they’re not alone: Researcher LMC Automotive projects that five of the six largest North American manufacturers will assemble fewer vehicles this quarter than a year ago.

Arguably the biggest concern the auto industry has going into 2020 is how much longer the good times will last after years of strong demand and rich pricing. While companies just sold over 17 million vehicles for a fifth consecutive year, more of their volume went to rental companies and other fleet purchasers. American consumers, who have been buying fewer new cars and trucks for several years, are finding them less affordable as the average window sticker approaches $35,000.

“It’s hard to argue why consumers would buy more vehicles this year, given these higher price points, given we’re so long in the tooth in this economic recovery period,” Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive, said during a presentation in Detroit this week.

Fiat Chrysler’s expected cutbacks are the least surprising. The Italian-American automaker built up a stock of as many as 70,000 unassigned vehicles in December, rankling sales staff who were forced to work overtime coaxing dealers to place orders. The pileup contributed to discounts the company billed as its most aggressive since 2008.

The carmaker is idling plants making minivans in Ontario and Jeep Cherokee sport utility vehicles in Illinois this week and next. It’s also pausing production for a few days in January at two Mexico factories that assemble key models including Ram trucks and Jeep Compass SUVs, according to a spokeswoman. LMC estimates the company will reduce North American production by about 5% from a year ago.

“We always balance our inventories with our dealers,” Jim Morrison, the head of Jeep for North America, said in a Jan. 13 interview. “We want to make sure there’s a good balance.”

LMC’s expectation for a small decline in GM production is a bit more confounding. United Auto Workers union members walked off assembly lines for 40 days last fall, costing the carmaker about $2.9 billion. Still, the company is expected to trim output by almost 2%.

Ford, which is projected to pare back by about 5%, has plants in Kentucky and Michigan each running one fewer shift than a year ago. A factory in Mexico is down while preparing to make the Mustang Mach-E electric crossover, while an Ontario facility stopped building the discontinued Ford Flex and Lincoln MKT models.

Honda Motor Co. is expected to make the most significant cut at 11%, while Toyota Motor Corp. is the only one of the top six producers LMC sees manufacturing more vehicles than a year ago. Industrywide, output may be little changed.

Most automakers anticipate weaker demand in 2020 and are trying to trim inventory accordingly, said Sam Fiorani, vice president at AutoForecast Solutions in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.

“Further slowing of production – either less overtime or week-long closures – is expected in the first and second quarters to keep inventories from getting out of control,” he said.

“The time of traditional car manufacturers is over,” Diess said in prepared remarks at an internal meeting on Thursday. The company must boost software operations to harness data from future cars, he said, citing a recent surge in electric-car rival Tesla’s share price as evidence of a changing competitive landscape.

Diess has called for deep changes at the industrial giant before, but his latest comments add a sense of urgency and risk reigniting tension with labor unions because he raises the possibility of additional cost cuts. It may be necessary to “slaughter holy cows” for VW to reach its full potential, he said.

His remarks echoed comments by former Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking a decade ago during his bold attempt to take over control of much-larger Volkswagen. The comment sparked fierce clashes with VW’s workforce. Wiedeking succeeded in acquiring a majority stake in VW but ran out of funds when the financial crisis erupted. The sportscar maker was folded into VW and Wiedeking left.

If VW fails to keep up with data and software, it could end up like Nokia, which overlooked the threat posed by Apple’s iPhone, Diess warned, calling for a stronger focus on profits and cash.

So far, VW has been relatively resilient to industry headwinds, eking out a small sales gain last year and record deliveries. Global demand for new vehicles declined in 2019 as sales in China, VW’s largest market, contracted and trade disputes stoked uncertainty across regions.

VW executives must recognize “the magnitude of our task and the brevity of time” the company has left to react, Diess said. “It gives us exactly one single try.”