French Automaker Groupe Renault has heralded their new strategic product roadmap with the unveiling of the Renault 5 electric prototype. While strictly for show at this stage, the concept captures the original car’s boxy and angular aesthetic beautifully, but adds a taught muscularity with sharply-creased lines giving the R5 the appearance of a tight skin wrapped over the body.

Many of us growing up in the 80’s and 90’s fondly remember the screaming mid-mounted Renault 5 Turbo carving up the international rally scene, and Renault has captured and re-made elements of that car beautifully.

Renault claims that these styling elements are more than nostalgia, rather they hide very high tech features. The bonnet air intake hides the charging hatch (that paintwork is going to get scratched in no time from the charging cable, but let’s allow Renault their fun), the rear lights include aero flaps, and the fog lamps in the bumper are daytime running lights. The side guard and wheels feature the numeral ‘5’, and the front end and the textile roof are supposedly drawn from the world of furniture.

The front and rear logos light up, bringing the car ‘to life’. The French flag in the rear-view mirrors to underline the “invented in France” side of the vehicle, the headrest lights and the name displayed on the small transparent screen on the dashboard, invite you to hop in for a ride.

A shift from the Carlos Ghosn era

In a marked departure from leadership under disgraced former boss Carlos Ghosn, Chief Executive Luca di Meo has told the Financial Times the company is undergoing a strategic shift from “volume to value”, and that cutting the number of its vehicle platforms, overhauling its factories, and sharing 80% of components with Nissan vehicles will lead to a 3 per cent operating margin by 2023, rising to 5 per cent by 2025.

Renault will aim to evolve into a brand of three tranches, as outlined below:

- a Tech brand, with an ecosystem approach that aims at creating world-leading, next-generation mobility OEMs and suppliers. This ecosystem called “Software République” will allow Renault, other founding members and future partners to develop joined expertise, build European know-how and defend our sovereignty in key technologies from big data to electronics. It will also allow Renault to equip its vehicles with leading artificial intelligence and cyber-security systems.

- a Service brand, offering the best connectivity and high-tech services embedded natively in our vehicles. In 2022, Renault will be introducing My Link, a new infotainment system with Google Built-in. Renault will be the first carmaker to bring Google services to mass-market cars.

Becoming more intelligent everyday, our vehicles will gain value over time. They will also live longer. Further, Renault will try to break the consumerist cycle and generate value up until vehicles’ end-of-life, all thanks to its Re-Factory in Flins (France). The plant will recondition more than a 100,000 used cars per year, repurpose Diesel LCV and convert them into biogas and pure EV. Renault also has a clear advantage when it comes to second life and end of life of batteries. The control of these parts of the value chain has the potential to generate new business cases and value.

- a Clean Energy brand, becoming a leader of the energy transition. Challenging leaders on the hybrid markets thanks to its revolutionary E-TECH technology, Renault will sustain its leadership on the electric market with new families of products based on our two dedicated electric platforms CMF-EV and CMF-B EV. The brand will also offer market-ready, end-to-end hydrogen solutions for LCVs. The target is to reach the greenest mix in European market.

Where this really interests us is is that Renault plans to double-down on both electrification and mix improvement. With a new line up of vehicles on new platforms sharing a greater number of components, Renault plans 7 new all-electric models by 2025. Whether the company can achieve this remains to be seen; Renault and Nissan have both been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and Renault plans to cut investment in electrification from 10 per cent of revenue to 8 per cent from this year.

Read the full press release here: RENAULT’S “ NOUVELLE VAGUE ”