Renault strategy does not deny the combustion car
Interview Luca de Meo: "With the new Renault plan, Spain has a great opportunity"
"Man, Manolo, new car? No, Rally"
was a slogan that those with more years in the DNI will remember.
It became famous in Spain back in 1975, as a claim for a wax for the bodywork that left a used car looking like new.
Almost five decades later, change the name of Manolo to whatever you like, but for Rally, replace it with Renault.
Or, rather, for its Refactories.
Like the one that inaugurated in Seville at the beginning of December and
that has been one of the latest achievements of José Vicente de
the Mozos before leaving the company.
They are the first Spanish facilities dedicated to the circular economy of the automobile, a concept that is becoming more and more in vogue and that would come to be something like
squeeze a car like a lemon, giving the whole a second life and even a third to some of its critical components such as the batteries of the electric ones.
Its start-up has to do with recent mantras such as sustainability, decarbonization or industry 4.0.
But the underlying reason would be found in any classical economics manual to respond to a current scenario marked by the scarcity of resources, the inflation of raw materials and a forced energy transition.
More, when the industry is not proving to be very applied in the reuse of car parts.
Little use
According to Renault, every year they reach the end of their useful life in Europe.
more than 11 million vehicles, manufactured -by law- with 85% recyclable materials.
However, it is an underexploited resource because new vehicles are built with only 30% of these components once recycled.
The rest is recovered for industrial applications such as metallurgy or construction.
It is, then, about
maximize the rate of recycled parts from one old car that are used as raw material in the manufacture of another.
In other words, a closed-loop circular economy process.
Although before reaching that point, it makes more sense to extend the use of the vehicles.
And that is what the Renault Refactory is dedicated to.
The one in Seville, with more than 5,000 square meters, is a kind of multi-brand used car 'factory' capable of treating and extending the useful life of more than 11,000 vehicles a year, which will be put back on the market through the commercial networks of the group in our country.
More than conditioning cars
The facilities consume 100% of their electricity from renewable sources and only use three liters of water to thoroughly wash each car.
In addition, the digitalization of the process allows saving resources and energy, achieving
recondition each car in a maximum of 12 days.
That is, a reduction of 50% compared to a conventional workshop.
This line of work is known as Re-Trofit, and it's certainly not 100% new.
In fact,
in our country companies like Clicars already apply it
, owned 100% since last year by Stellantis, the industrial conglomerate that competes with the Renault Group.
The difference lies, on the one hand, in that the latter
It brings to Seville the tools and industrial know-how of its 'traditional' factories, which also results in more competitive prices.
Secondly, the Spanish facilities also house three other lines of activity.
Thus, the baptized as
Re-Energy
It will deal with giving a second life to the batteries of electric vehicles that are no longer operational for them, but that can be used, for example, for stationary energy storage.
For his part,
Re-Cycle
It will be in charge of maximizing efficiency in the management of resources and the flow of parts and materials.
By last,
Restart
it will promote and identify new applications linked to the circular economy and the entire automotive value chain.
Ongoing since 2020
In fact, it is a smaller-scale replica of what is being done at the Flins Refactory, near Paris and the first of its kind launched at the end of 2020 by the company led by Luca de Meo.
These facilities, which have 700 employees and hope to reach 3,000 by the end of the decade, will be able to treat up to 45,000 used vehicles per year
or repair and recondition up to 20,000 batteries by 2030. They have already developed a stationary energy storage project with used batteries with a capacity of 15 Mwh, they are also working on applications with
hydrogen fuel cells
and this year they will launch a new line dedicated to
the transformation of vans with combustion engines to 100% electric.
All this ecosystem is integrated, in turn, into a larger one.
Is about
The Future is Neutral, one of the five companies into which the Renault Group has been divided
according to the strategy announced last November.
While the others (Ampere, Alpine, Mobilize or Power) are specialized in electric vehicles, sports vehicles, new mobility or combustion and hybrid cars,
The Future is Neutral is dedicated to the 360º circular economy of the automobile on an industrial scale, it will offer its services inside and outside the group and aspires to achieve coverage of more than 90% in this value chain.
By 2022, the forecast is that it has already generated revenue of 800 million euros, which should be
2,300 million in the year 2030 with an operating margin of more than 10%.
Figures that the company hopes will attract new partners, to whom it has reserved a "minimum" part of the capital of this division in exchange for co-financing investments worth around 500 million euros throughout this decade.
The first industrial metaverse
Taken together, it is a transformation of the business that will have another digital revolution as its common thread, which has already resulted in the creation of the first industrial metaverse at Renault.
It is based on three main elements.
On the one hand, the massive collection of data,
of which the group's factories generate up to a million of them per day.
For another,
modeling all physical assets as digital twins,
so that each factory in its entirety has its replica in that virtual world.
And finally,
real-time management of that universe
thanks to Artificial Intelligence and a connectivity that reaches 100% of the equipment or monitors 90% of the supply flows.
A management that is carried out from a Control Tower also located in Flins.
In this way, it is possible to know
where in the world a certain vehicle or supply is located;
detect if a robot in any factory is working improperly
;
design the optimal route for transport or make more accurate production predictions based on the different flows of vehicles and components.
But also improve aspects such as training using, for example,
gaming techniques to simulate the painting of car bodies.
Since 2016, the implementation of Industry 4.0 has already allowed the group to save 780 million
and, in this new phase, profits of another 580 million are expected to be achieved, apart from a 60% reduction in the delivery time of the vehicles, a 50% reduction in the carbon footprint resulting from their manufacture, or a 60% in vehicle warranty costs.
In this ecosystem, Spain is at the forefront since, as those responsible for the manufacturer recognized,
"The Valladolid Motors factory is probably the best in the industrial metaverse".
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