“When will the EU stop the decline of the automotive industry, which is linked to regulation, unrealistic electrification, and also maybe not enough protection of the value chains in Europe?” asked Provost. “As Renault, we recommend the EU works on [some] very simple political decisions: confirm electrification but in a flexible way and freeze all regulation on all cars in Europe for 10 years to help us focus on cost reduction and price reduction for European customers. Today, Europe is a unique place in the world, where, due to regulation, the price of cars is much too high.”
Announcing Renault’s financial results, chief finance officer Duncan Minto said re-homologating its cars to meet the new Euro 6e-bis powertrain regulation contributed to a €425m [around £364m] hit on the sales margin in the last six months. “Euro 6e-bis [put] additional cost into several engines both across Renault brand and Dacia for which it was very difficult to pass on: there was very little gain for consumers as it was just to answer regulatory requirements,” he stated.
Despite some 25 per cent of all Renault’s engineers being deployed to meet regulatory requirements, the car maker has still managed to rip up its development practices and engineering operation to deliver the new Twingo electric city car at around £17,000. Slashing the number of parts, learning from the Chinese to cut development time to under two years and introducing new, cheaper battery chemistry is critical to cutting prices – and Renault will utilise this know-how in its FutuREady strategy to deliver all upcoming cars at prices competitive with the Chinese.
Announcing its half-year financial results, Renault Group collected €30.3-billion in revenue, up around 10 per cent, with a 5.2 per cent operating margin. Renault and Dacia sales dipped slightly in Europe, offset by growth in international markets – India climbed 61 per cent – and Alpine posting a similar growth rate, from 5,100 to 8,500 cars in the period.
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