Renault CEO Luca de Meo, left, and French Economic Minister Bruno Le Maire at the automaker's Dieppe factory, with an Alpine A110 in 2021.
PARIS -- Renault Group is considering moving production of the successor to its Alpine A110 sports car to partner Lotus's UK plant from its historic home in Dieppe, northern France, a French business newspaper reported.
Renault declined to comment on the report in La Tribune on Tuesday.
Lotus, owned by China’s Geely, and Alpine have committed to develop a full-electric sports car platform together by 2025. The platform would underpin an A110's successor.
The A110, itself a modern successor to the lightweight Alpine model from the 1960s and 1970s, has been assembled -- largely by hand -- in Dieppe since it was launched in 2017. Alpine itself started as a Dieppe-based Renault tuner in the 1950s.
Renault, meanwhile, has committed producing an electric crossover at the plant starting in 2025.
The A110 uses a Nissan-derived, high-output four-cylinder engine, but does not have any hybrid or electric options. The current model is due to be phased out by 2025 because of tighter emissions targets and other regulations, Renault CEO Luca de Meo has said.
De Meo believe the Alpine brand, until now limited to just the A110, has untapped potential. He has already rebranded Renault’s Formula One team as Alpine, and plans to expand Alpine’s passenger car lineup to include a full-electric “hot hatch,” the electric successor to the A110 and a full-electric SUV.
The battery-powered hatchback will be built on the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance’s CMF-BEV platform and be a sibling model to the coming Renault 5. The SUV will be based on the alliance’s CMF-EV platform.
Reuters contributed to this report
