Renault’s future “affordable” electric car will be made in Slovenia. This decision, anticipated for several months, was made official on Wednesday, July 24 at the Novo Mesto plant, located about 60 kilometers east of the capital Ljubljana, in the presence of the Slovenian Prime Minister, Robert Golob, the plant director, Jože Bele, and the industrial director for passenger vehicles and the Renault brand, Herbert Steiner.
A memorandum of understanding was signed between the company and the state after a ceremony, according to a video published by the Slovenian Press Agency. The start of production of the future city car is planned for 2026 in the only car factory in Slovenia, which has been manufacturing successive generations of Twingo since 2007.
What investments and subsidies will be included in this contract? No amount has been disclosed yet. Several local media outlets report that 300 jobs could eventually be created in the plant, which employed 1,405 people as of December 31, 2023.
This announcement should help ensure the future of the site, as current production of Twingo models with thermal and electric engines is due to stop at the end of the year. The site’s production has fallen in recent years, against a backdrop of a slowdown in the automotive market: just over 60,000 vehicles left its production lines in 2023, compared to nearly 210,000 in 2018.
The first Ampere electric car produced outside France
The name Novo Mesto has been circulating since the presentation of the prototype of the new model on November 15, 2023, during an investor day organized by Ampère. This entity, created in 2023, manufactures all of the Renault group’s electric models in Hauts-de-France. The decision to allocate the production of this small electric vehicle to an Eastern country, for obvious cost reasons, is a first. In the long term, other models could follow. “Will an electric car be produced in Spain? We are asking ourselves the question for the next generation, that is to say from 2028 or 2029, until 2035,” said Luca de Meo, the manufacturer’s CEO, a few days ago. in the columns of Les Echos.
“Making small electric cars in Europe is a bit of a specialty at Renault,” recalled the CEO of the diamond at the beginning of the year from Geneva (Switzerland), where he presented his highly anticipated Renault 5. The manager, who claims to be “the only one to defend the people’s car” (meaning: a compact city car aimed at the middle class), assured that the future Twingo would be marketed around, or even under, 20,000 euros (excluding subsidies), thanks in particular to an LFP type battery supplied by the Chinese group CATL from its Hungarian factory.
Collaboration with Volkswagen aborted
Renault wanted to collaborate with another manufacturer on this project, in order to share development and production costs while ensuring attractive margins. But negotiations with the German manufacturer Volkswagen were unsuccessful. The Novo Mesto plant will therefore not see a new German model come off its lines, as it produced Smart ForFour for Daimler between 2014 and 2021.
Source: www.usinenouvelle.com
