Automotive News Europe — 2023-11-15
Automotive Industry
Renault's response to low-cost EVs from European rivals and new entrants from China will be the next-generation Twingo, a full-electric city car built in Europe with a price of less than €20,000, CEO Luca de Meo said.
The automaker on Wednesday said it would launch the car in 2026, and de Meo showed the model to investors at a capital markets day here for Ampere, Renault's EV spinoff.
"This is a silver bullet for sustainable urban mobility," de Meo said. He said the car would be developed in a "record" two years to match the speed of Chinese automakers.
Renault described the new Twingo as a "fit-for-purpose urban vehicle" with a monthly cost of less than €100 and "best-in-class" energy consumption of 10 kilowatt hours per 100 km, which would be 50% better than current small EVs.
In earlier press releases, Renault had referred to the Twingo as the "Legend."
The Twingo could be made at Renault's factory in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, which builds the current Twingo in battery-electric and combustion engine versions, and the Clio small car. The plant has also produced the Smart ForFour, a sibling model to the Twingo.
Competitors will include the potential future models from Tesla and Volkswagen as well as the Citroen New e-C3, which will be built in Slovakia, will start at €23,300 and have a range of 300 km. A shorter-range version of the New e-C3, due in 2025, is expected to cost less than €20,000.
Several experts, however, expect the real threat will come from China, where Renault's cheapest EV, the Dacia Spring, is built.
"We had to ask ourselves the question of how to attack the A segment," he said, acknowledging there was a lot of discussion about sourcing the Spring from China.
Kei cars
He compared the new-generation Twingo to Japan’s kei cars, which are small-displacement runabouts that make up more than one-third of the market in that country.
The "Twingo is the European kei car," he said. "It's a very intelligent concept. It doesn't make sense to use a 2.5-ton car to move a single person in the city."
"We have to go back to smaller cars," he added. "Instead of talking about it, I'm presenting a solution that is feasible, and that is the Twingo."
De Meo has experience launching successful city cars. As head of the Fiat brand in the 2000s, he backed development of the 500, which has been on the market largely unchanged since 2007.
"It reminds me of the 500 at Fiat," he said of the forthcoming Twingo, which he called an "iconic" Renault product. "It's a project that comes out of the guts of the organization. You don't really need to plan it -- people want to build it."