PARIS -- Renault said it will combine three of its plants in northern France to form an electric car hub with lower production costs and annual production of 400,000 EVs a year by 2025.
The single plant, known as Renault ElectriCity, would lead to the creation of 700 jobs spread across the various sites, which currently employ nearly 5,000 people, by 2025, Renault said on Wednesday, confirming reports from earlier this month.
The automaker, which is looking to produce fewer and more profitable cars under CEO Luca de Meo, faces strong competition in the electric car market, an area in which it had an early lead but where bigger rival Volkswagen is is catching up.
Its French plan to create a new legal entity and combine the workforce from the three sites has backing from all the company's unions, Renault said, and will entail further labor negotiations as it overhauls previous work agreements.
Talks will include reviewing gaps between some older contracts for 35-hour weeks that were paid at 39 hours and newer ones without that status, said Luciano Biondo, the head of the new industrial hub.
Changes such as these "will contribute to reaching the necessary competitiveness to produce B segment cars in France," Biondo said, referring to smaller passenger vehicles.
Of the three plants affected, Douai is a car assembly site, Maubeuge a commercial vehicles assembly plant and the Ruitz site, which manufactures gear boxes, will be assigned a new electrical components manufacturing role, Renault said.
Kerrigan Advisors’ proprietary annual OEM Survey of over 100 executives reveals that the majority of respondents are worried about the financial impact of Chinese automakers’ growing global market share, and most expect that the EV transition to be slower than expected. The survey also queried executives on their outlooks for dealership valuations and profitability, as well as their expectations for the future of dealer networks and facility requirements.
It will shrink the size of some of the factories and also aims to produce some its future electric models, such as a full-electric version of the Megane and next-generation R5, on one assembly line.
Money-losing Renault has been looking to slash costs, including through redundancies, as it tries to lift its profitability under De Meo.
Electric cars are still more expensive to produce than traditional ones, adding to the cost equation. Renault wanted to nudge manufacturing costs to between 3 percent and 4 percent of the cars' selling price, but was still far from these levels, Biondo said.
