Like an unexpected policeman’s knock on the door, it’s not good news as the biennial Paris motor show opens today. Car makers are reeling as the expected post-Covid recovery has failed to happen. In Europe, August sales were down 18.3 per cent year-on-year to the lowest for three years.
And far from a wonderful new world of low-carbon transport as predicted by EU policymakers and UK governments, if anything, the reverse seems to be happening. Battery electric car sales were down one third over the same period.
With car makers reporting a deeper downturn than expected and predicting it will be longer-lasting, business leaders are saying that EU policy makers are ill-prepared for precisely how expensive the transition to a low-carbon economy is going to be.
The UK is in the vanguard of that high-cost transition as the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate forces producers of cars and vans to sell EVs as a rising proportion of their total sales, or pay fines amounting to £15,000 per car over the mandate, which starts at 22 per cent this year and rising to 80 per cent by 2030.
In response, this year’s market is being shored up by what the UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) called “unprecedented EV discounting”.
How unprecedented? The SMMT reckons that by the end of this year the UK motor industry will have splurged upwards of £2 billion in discounting EV sales to avoid fines, or buying credits from solely electric car producers.
While this is completely unsustainable, even in the medium term, does this ill wind, together with a new generation of small EVs coming to market, make for an Indian summer for buyers on the cusp of purchasing an electric car?
Well yes and no, but more no than yes. Yes, because you might be able to wheedle a discount out of a dealer, but no because that will be reflected in the residual value of that car when you come to sell it. EV resale values are already on the floor and this won’t help. Certainly, cute-looking small electric cars such as the new Renault R5 or the R4 (which was introduced in Paris – see below) will attract buyers, but their profitability is similarly small, which goes to the heart of the debate over whether the same company’s new Twingo (also see below) will come to Britain.
And it’s a resounding no if you do high mileages and don’t have another car, nor off-street parking and charging, which leaves you at the mercy of the public recharging infrastructure. I recently paid £1.12 per kWh for a recharge and I’m not alone in finding the UK’s EV charging sector somewhat like Dick Turpin in its treatment of road users.
Yet there are solutions. Mobilize, Renault’s mobility division, was advertising its new account called Mobilize Charge which costs only 0.39 euros (57.7p) per kWh for on-the-go charging. There’s a monthly charge, but on that basis you’d save the cost of the activation card after only one charge. Needless to say, it isn’t coming to Britain…
It’s fair to say that the economics of the motor industry are in some disarray. It’s no longer enough to build a car that people want to buy and watch the cash registers ringing. While you might have heard of a renaissance of small cars at the Paris show, it’s worth pointing out that this is simply car makers trying to minimise their losses by selling tinier cars instead of large ones.
Carlos Tavares, the boss of the giant Stellantis 14-brand car-making group, which includes Vauxhall, is the first to admit “an EV is a better car”, but as far as the UK Government’s treatment of the market is concerned, he could barely hide his disdain.
“I think that it’s very dangerous for a country to have a mandate that is ahead of what the consumer wants, [which] you have in the UK,” he said.
“We will have to adjust a certain number of things in the UK, because putting [in] the market 20 per cent of EV mix, which is what we are doing right now, has an impact on our profitability and as a consequence I need to restore the profitability by certain number of decisions in terms of making our things more efficient in the UK. I will be very specific about these very soon.”
Just to decode this, when Tavares talks about making things “more efficient” it usually means cuts and, since he has a car and a van plant in the UK, if I were a member of the Labour Government I’d be thinking hard about jobs versus subsidies to buyers of EVs – Tavares has a way of concentrating minds on his agenda.
As far as Paris is concerned, this biennial world of the car is one of the few “public” shows, where in days gone by the inhabitants of the City of Lights would spin the turnstiles to the tune of well over a million visitors. Two years ago, however, it was a pale shadow of those halcyon days, which stirred Luca de Meo, Renault’s boss, to reaffirm his belief in traditional car shows and confirm that his would be back in 2024 with all the car in all the colours.
And so he has done, with concepts and production cars, all the suits to talk to and enough suppers in ramekins to almost make a proper supper. Arch rival Stellanti dragged its feet but followed suit by exhibiting in Paris, while BMW turned up with the new battery-powered John Cooper Works Mini and Paceman to tempt the crowds.
The organisers are expecting more than half a million members of the public between now and October 20, which is as good as it gets for car shows these days.
Andrew English’s top five at the show
Renault Twingo
Hark, an email arrives from Renault’s UK spin doctor. I’d asked a simple question of Vittorio D’Arienzo, product head of Renault’s AmpR division responsible for the new R5, R4 and Twingo, plus other as yet unnamed small EVs. “Will you make the same mistake again and not make the Twingo in right-hand drive?”
You’ll recall that the hugely successful Patrick Le Quément-designed Twingo city runaround of 1993 was never made with the steering wheel on the right and wasn’t officially sold in Britain. Is Renault about to do the same thing 30 years later?
D’Arienzo, who worked on the Abarth-tweaked Fiat 500 with Renault boss Luca de Meo, is charming, straight-talking and seems to have failed to take on board the iron-clad rule at Renault: never tell les rosbifs anything.
“I would like this car to come to Britain,” he said, confirming also that it has been engineered for right-hand drive. “It’s about the volume now. It is in the plan today and technically the work is done. We are now waiting for the results of the study.”
Renault has been teasing us with the idea of a new Twingo for the last decade. After last year’s 30th anniversary study of a modern Twingo by Sabine Marcelis, it became known that a 3.8-metre long car would be part of the AmpR division’s plans. D’Arienzo says he’s pleased to have managed to make it cheaply enough to cost less than 20,000 euros (£16,700) in Europe. Other voices from within Renault say it is not confirmed for sale, it is not in the plan, it is the subject of discussions at Renault UK. Hum…
Slated for launch in 2026, the Twingo concept on the Renault stand is, according to D’Arienzo, close to sign-off for production, although he was only partly tongue in cheek when he moaned on the eve of the show that the new-found enthusiasm at Renault’s technical and design departments meant engineers and designers were bombarding him with new suggestions to improve the tiddler.
What a shame if we don’t get in the UK…
Citroen C5 Aircross concept
Looking like it has been in a Rocky-style training montage, this muscular replacement for Renault’s comfy old C5 takes a turn to the aggressive, in Kermit green with a bluff front and a rear spoiler reminiscent of the old BX GTI.
With a new “light signature” (head and tail light styling to you and I) and body design, it’s slated for launch in the middle of next year and the concept looked kind of ready. A good test of these things is to examine the windscreen wipers, mirrors and so on. These seemed present and correct, but we weren’t allowed to look inside, so some things are clearly still in the pipeline.
Renault Emblème
Internally it’s known as the 2030 car and is the result of a beard-stroking study at Renault to create a zero-emissions car in cradle-to-grave terms.
“They didn’t succeed,” said Luca de Meo, Renault CEO. “They only achieved 90 per cent of the challenge.”
So, during its life, the Emblème will create only five tonnes of carbon dioxide, compared with the 50 tonnes produced by the average European car.
“It’s a manifesto for technical innovation,” said de Meo, who explained that the car mixes 40kWh battery with a fuel cell to give an extra 350km (217 miles) of range should you decide to travel farther than intended that day. Filling up, de Meo says, at the commercial vehicle hydrogen refuelling infrastructure currently being installed every 124 miles in Europe. The total range therefore is close to 1,000km (620 miles).
“I will try to build it,” says de Meo, though quite where it would fit into the calendar in six years is difficult to predict. A replacement Megane, perhaps? An all-new model similar to a Toyota Prius’s range? No one seems to know, but it’s an impressive achievement all the same. We hope to get our hands on the concept soon.
Renault 4
Introduced to the strains of Gilbert Bécaud’s 1968 romantic crooning Je Reviens Te Chercher (I’ll Come Back For You), the new 4 was wheeled onto the Renault stand. Try to forget the 60-year-old utilitarian original though, as this heavily redesigned car is actually larger and more expensive than the new Renault R5 which shares its AmpR platform, with similar battery packs and drivetrains. But as design chief Gilles Vidal said: “It’s not just for those who drove the original but a new generation of owners who want a practical and functional city car.”
So expect this 4.14m-long machine to have a 420-litre boot and a range of practical loading options, including a fully folding front passenger seat so you can slide in a mid-length surfboard. Prices are rumoured to be from about £26,000-£27,000, though that’s for the small battery.
And if you load it up like the Flower Power special model on the stand, expect the bill to be nearer £35,000. Being a hippy these days doesn’t come cheap.
Dacia Bigster
It might be the biggest Dacia but the Bigster, at 4.5 metres in length, is one of the smaller family SUVs in this burgeoning market – the largest in Europe. It’s due on sale in Spring 2025 and with two petrol engines (one a mild hybrid) and a 153bhp full hybrid using parent company Renault’s novel e-Hybrid system, it should be competitive in performance terms, particularly as it weighs about 155kg less than rivals.
With prices starting at a rumoured £25,000 or lower, there’s a lot to like here. As ever with Dacia, they stripped out all the touchscreens and extraneous software (apparently, Dacia buyers hate such things and begrudge paying extra for them) and instead installed more simple controls including lots of physical buttons.
You’ve got to love this erstwhile Romanian national car maker, not least because of its dichotomous position in the Renault Group, which runs counter to the late-model capitalism view that you can save the planet by simply buying more stuff.
“When you don’t put 150kg of stuff on your car, you can put in a smaller power unit and still have acceptable performance,” says Denis le Vot, Dacia’s effusive CEO.
He points out that 84 per cent of Dacia production is purchased by private individuals, which is something of a two-fingered gesture at fleet sales-addicted rivals. Outside of France’s metropolitan areas, owning a Dacia is considered something of a savvy move. Buyers keep their cars, too, upwards of eight years on average, which keeps residual values high and overall replacement CO2 emissions low.
Perhaps the more conventional car industry could learn a thing or two here…
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