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The retro supermini might be in showrooms within the first months of 2026 on present timings
Renault has partnered with a Chinese language engineering agency to develop its sub-£17,000 Twingo city car after talks with Volkswagen a couple of potential collaboration proved fruitless.
The 2 corporations had been evaluating the prospect of co-developing their respective entry-level metropolis EVs. However Volkswagen will now work independently to carry its equally conceived ‘ID 1’ to manufacturing in 2027.
Renault will as a substitute be assisted by the unnamed Chinese manufacturing outfit, which is known to be a provider quite than a automobile maker.
“I needed to point out that European trade may work collectively as a workforce, so I believe it is a misplaced alternative,” Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo instructed Reuters after the talks ended, however work on the Twingo has continued.
The retro supermini is scheduled to be revealed in late 2025 and in showrooms within the first months of 2026 on present timings.
The idea freeze happened at first of this 12 months and Renault is dedicated to a 24-month improvement cycle.
De Meo has instructed Autocar that partnering with the unnamed Chinese language agency is essential to attaining this formidable improvement timeframe and figuring out efficiencies that the agency can make use of to cut back prices.
Requested how Renault will make the Twingo worthwhile, he mentioned: “We’ll do it by radically altering our manufacturing engineering and our part sourcing.
“Usually, we specify huge parts like HVAC methods from huge tier-one suppliers. We ship them a 1000-page holy e-book about how a Renault HVAC system needs to be, they usually create a brand new one. However perhaps this stuff are already there in our different automobiles. If they’re, we’ll use them in future. We can do a automobile on a cycle beneath 24 months.”
Slashing improvement lead occasions is vital as a result of it’ll permit Renault to be “extra agile, extra virtuous and extra aggressive”, de Meo has mentioned beforehand. However one other profit of constructing the event and manufacturing course of extra environment friendly is that it may drastically scale back its automobiles’ environmental influence.
“We have now analysis that proves that from cradle to grave, a brand new Twingo can have 75% much less influence on the atmosphere than a mean European automobile now,” mentioned de Meo. “If all the automobiles in Paris have been as small and economical as a Twingo, it will liberate highway area equal to the realm of 60 soccer fields! And Paris is sort of a small metropolis…”
Accelerating the event of small electric cars just like the Twingo is particularly vital on this context, instructed de Meo, as a result of “authorities are going to shut cities to automobiles with engines”.
Talking individually to Autocar, product boss Bruno Vanel mentioned collaborating with a Chinese language agency means Renault has higher oversight of “the expertise that’s coming, and we are able to higher adapt the brand new applied sciences, take much less danger and spend much less by way of improvement”.
Renault has but to determine which plant will construct the Twingo, however Vanel mentioned the corporate’s ElectriCity industrial advanced, centred within the north of France, offers “a footprint which may be very concentrated” and permits it to construct domestically at aggressive charges.
Vanel mentioned: “We’ve acquired the batteries produced and assembled near the crops. The electrical motor is constructed not too distant [at Cléon]. The plant that produces the Scenic and Mégane will construct Renault 5 – so all electric cars in fairly huge volumes, decreasing the fee.”
As proof of the viability of constructing small automobiles in Europe, Vanel pointed to the €25,000 (roughly £21,275) beginning worth of the 5. “This automobile is produced in France, and this automobile is worthwhile,” he mentioned.
He even instructed that cheaper variations of the 5 could possibly be added to the line-up if new battery expertise permits – they usually too would have a revenue margin inbuilt.
The query of localising EV manufacturing has develop into significantly poignant for Renault because the French authorities has begun providing substantial EV buy incentives that favour European-built automobiles.
Subsidies of €5000-€7000 (£4255-£5955) can be found on automobiles with a carbon footprint of beneath 14.75 tonnes, which inherently favours native manufacturing.
The massively common Dacia Spring, for instance, is imported from China and the ensuing enhance in carbon footprint makes it ineligible for the grants.
This pushes its entry worth from simply over €17,000 (£14,465) to greater than €22,000 (£18,720) in France.
Vanel acknowledged that it’s “troublesome” to compete at that worth, emphasising the necessity to make sure the equally sized Twingo is engineered, assembled and shipped as cost-effectively as potential.
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