Renault brings a Chinese partner on board for electric Twingo
The name of the partner has not been made public. In a statement, a spokesperson told the news agency Reuters that the “Twingo’s development is moving forward quickly, as we plan to make the development in two years.” Furthermore, he added: “The development of the car will be done with a Chinese engineering partner to improve our development lead time and costs. The project is conducted by Ampere. The styling and advanced engineering project are made in France, and production will be in Europe, as planned.”
With its low-priced Twingo, Renault hopes to compete with Chinese rivals such as BYD, which is flooding the market with small and cheap EVs. And cooperations between European and Chinese carmakers are becoming more common. For example, Volkswagen is working with Xpeng and and Stellantis with Leapmotor.
Renault unveiled a study for the model in November. Since then, it has been clear that although the compact electric car was initially referred to the ‘Legend,‘ it is actually an electric Twingo – with many design borrowings from the first Twingo generation from the 1990s. However, the prototype has virtually nothing in common with the current Twingo generation, which still shares the platform with the now-discontinued Smart Forfour, apart from its compact format.
Renault had initially tried to collaborate with Volkswagen on a small electric car. But talks recently came to a halt because, apparently, the German carmaker wanted to produce its own small electric vehicle in a Renault factory. A few days ago, VW announced that it will manufacture its small EV, with a starting price of 20,000 euros, on its own.
According to Renault, partnering with a Chinese engineering company is not a result of failed talks with Volkswagen. That decision was allegedly made even earlier. However, Renault boss Luca de Meo regretted that the cooperation did not materialise and said: “I wanted to show that European industry could work together as a team, so I think this is a lost opportunity, but there may be others,” de Meo told Reuters at the time.
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