Renault promises cooperation with EU’s China antitrust probe

France’s Renault will support the EU’s inquiry into potential anti-competitive state support given to EVs made in China and then imported into the EU. But it also stresses that it supports fair competition.

“As a philosophy, we are not into protectionism,” says Renault CFO Thierry Pieton. “We want our vehicles to be competitive in their own right.

“Our first commitment is to work like hell on the features of the cars, on the cost of the cars, on the overall package that we give to the consumer so that the cars are competitive in the market, period.”

And he cites the new Scenic BEV that is due to be launched in late Q1 next year as an example. On price positioning versus the features that Renault offers on the Scenic, “we think it is a very competitive car”, says the finance chief.

“When we do the milestones and the review of the development of our programmes, we never let the teams count on subsidies. The cars need to fly without bonuses and subsidies,” he maintains.

But Pieton does offer an important caveat. “That being said, when you play a sport, you would like all the players to have the same rules,” he says.

You know what else isn't a level playing field? The 2023 B-2-B intelligence market, where incumbency, huge marketing budgets and algorithms stack the deck against newcomers looking to do things better than what's been offered before. So, if you appreciate what EV inFocus is trying to do, sign up for our weekly newsletter to give us that little bit of support we need.

And Renault feels that there is an “imbalance today in terms of the rules that we have to contend with if we want to go to China or if we wanted to go to the US with Inflation Reduction Act, but there is no barrier to entry to Europe”. “The fact that someone is looking into how the industry is run in each one of the different geographies” is something to which Renault will thus lend its support.