Ladies and gentlemen, may I welcome here on stage Mr. Fabrice Cambolive, Brand CEO at Renault. Mr. Cambolive, welcome to Milan.
Hello, hello. Thank you for the invitation.
It's really a pleasure having you because I know that you have an extremely busy agenda, so thank you very much.
Your agenda is also quite busy.
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Mr. Cambolive, to start with probably one of the easiest but also most important questions for this audience: how important is B2B sales, fleet sales, for your brand Renault?
I would say that if we take the numbers, one sale out of two is towards B2B business. It means in terms of business it's of course really important. But what you showed before is for me even more important: it means our business partners are important for us in terms of quality, in terms of feedback regarding our product. They are also important for us to conceive and think about the product of the next generation.
With Renault you are not only betting on battery electric vehicles. Why not?
I think three years ago there was a lot of question regarding the type of energy we should select for our customers. In terms of strategy, at that time three years ago there was a lot of opportunities between hybrid, full hybrid, plug-in hybrid, there was still diesel, hydrogen, full BEV cars. And people, customers, OEMs and fleet customers were sometimes a little lost in translation because it was very difficult to see where the market will go. And of course if you can't predict that three years ago, you pay that now with your residual value. By Renault, three years ago we made three very clear choices. The first one was to bet on full hybrid ICE cars, not plug-in but full hybrid. Why? Because somewhere those cars are compliant with the regulation 2025. We are offering cars around 100 grams of CO2 per kilometer. It means we are at the level of the regulation up to 2025, and you don't have the constraint of charging your car, and the consumption is very low. But we decided to put on all our lineup full hybrid technology. And on the other side we made a two-leg strategy with a bet on EV based on a dedicated platform. And dedicated platform, what does it mean? It means you don't overweight your car, you play on efficiency, you play on rightness in compact size, and that's what we are developing on our second BEV leg strategy.
Do you understand that there are car manufacturers that are only betting on pure electric vehicles?
I think we are in a business where you have always to manage risk. I will not comment on the ones betting only on BEV. I would just say that if you want the perfect balance to manage your business and to avoid a lot of risk, better to bet on two legs very fixed on the ground than just only trying to run with one leg.
Good. You recently launched Ampere, an entity specialized on EV but also software technology. What does it bring to Renault?
I think the first benefit from Ampere is speed. I think when you manage this leg of BEV cars, you have to be very reactive on the evolution of the technology, you have to be very reactive on your capacity to develop a software which can be upgraded permanently. And I think to have dedicated teams focused on this EV ecosystem is quite interesting for us to be even more competitive. That's the idea of Ampere.
Okay. Let's now look at a picture. Normally there is now a picture that should come. You know that vehicle? Yes, yes. So you presented this concept car. It's a fuel cell hydrogen powertrain vehicle. What is your vision with regard to hydrogen as a powertrain for the future?
I think this car, Emblem, is more than a vision regarding hydrogen. Emblem is about going towards decarbonization. More or less, if you take the CO2 balance of a normal car in the market from cradle to grave, it's 50 tons of CO2. With this car we decided to go from 50 to five. I want to go from 50 to zero, but of course you have to accept some grams. And to do that, the teams worked on many different fields: aerodynamic, capacity of recycling the materials, capacity to provide parts from an ecosystem which is not too expensive in terms of logistics, and of course after that a dual power between hydrogen and EV, but with a very efficient battery EV battery just in order not to have too much carbon regarding all the energy management. This idea of Emblem is not only an insight regarding the future of hydrogen, but the willingness of the company to decrease radically our carbonization balance for the future and for our customers.
Now the people here in the room would love to know what new models they can expect, when can they expect from Renault a passenger car on hydrogen?
I think hydrogen we have already hydrogen on Master, on LCV. But for passenger car, you don't have to expect now. In LCV for passenger car is just a concept car up to now. We have to be very pragmatical. I would say that the next generation from now is based on, as explained before, those two legs: on one end full hybrid on ICE, on the other end BEV. And for hydrogen, let's wait a little. We will come back with a definitive proposal, but a little later.
What do you expect as Renault, but also as a car manufacturer, as a brand, with regard to the acceleration of zero emission mobility from the new authorities?
