Automotive News Europe — 2024-06-14
Automotive Industry
The Renault 5 small EV will take nine hours to build, thanks in part to digital manufacturing technology, Franck Naro, head of the automaker's industrial strategy, said at the Automotive News Europe Congress in Frankfurt.
Renault can match the production speed of the most competitive Chinese electric-vehicle makers with the new Renault 5 small EV, the company’s head of industrial strategy said at the 2024 Automotive News Europe Congress.
Renault has said it will take nine hours to build the Renault 5 when it goes into production later this summer in its Douai, France, site. The company believes the build time is competitive with the best of the Chinese.
"From what we can see we are parallel to them,” Franck Naro, vice president for industrial strategy and corporate operations at Renault Group, said at the event here on 12 June 2024. "We know exactly where we are. We know exactly where the best competitors are.”
Renault has a goal of cutting the cost to produce electric cars by 50% by 2027, the company said in December 2023. At the same time, Renault aims to cut vehicle development times to two years from three.
Shortening production time has become a hot topic among automakers in recent months as they look to bring the cost of electric cars down to the level of combustion engine equivalents.
"HPU [hours per unit] is now very famous, everybody in the industry is talking about it,” Naro said. "We were very surprised because before that it was just pure manufacturing people who were discussing it.”
Benchmarking Tesla, Chinese brands
Renault tore down vehicles from Chinese EV makers as well as Tesla to see where it could reduce complexity, he said. "We have tried to identify parts that are not so relevant in some areas of the car,” Naro said.
Helping Renault is a computer generated "digital twin” of the car and the factory system that enables the company to identify potential production bottlenecks, even during the car’s development. "You can swap in and out parts and say, 'Well, if we use this part it will take less time',” Naro said.
Another benefit is Renault’s "industrial metaverse” production system in which processes are connected digitally to create a computerized overview of much of its manufacturing and supply chain. In 2023, the company said the metaverse had saved it €270 m ($290 m).
Naro gave the example of preventing breakdowns on a stamping machine, which he said could cost upward of €1 m if it failed and the plant had to switch to a backup solution. "This kind of backup is very costly. So, if you’re preventing 11 or 12 big breakdowns every year, you can imagine the savings,” he said. Renault now has 14,000 pieces of equipment connected to its metaverse.
Cutting energy costs
The metaverse is also a tool to help Renault Group cut energy usage at its plants by 40% in 2025, from 2019 levels. The company said last year it was halfway toward its target.
Renault is pointing to the power of its digital knowledge of its manufacturing system as a way to recruit talented employees, but Naro said that the company needs to attract and train more people to be able to understand and maintain the digital side of the technology.
Said Naro: "Inside our plant, we don't have enough people that we can be autonomous with this technology,” Naro said.