#France

Now we know why Reuters became confused about Daimler and Renault: It’s those other French forging a bloody alliance with those other Germans as well!

Developing a new car with traditional technology costs an arm and a leg. Add future technology, and you are starting to talk real money. You need to spread the R&D costs across a lot of cars. The trouble is, massive sales of EVs are still just a dream. What to do in such a dicey situation? You look for partners. Renault and Daimler hammered out a new agreement. “Renault will supply the electric motors for the Smart and Twingo, we develop and make the batteries for both models,” Daimler’s head of research and development Thomas Weber told his hometown paper Stuttgarter Zeitung in an interview that will appear today in the print edition.

Sure, Internet video is mostly about dental-fetish porn (particularly the very stimulating “spit sink” subgenre), but when the novocaine wears off and the last vinyl-clad hygienist has put aside her last stainless-steel scraper, you’re ready to explore the other great thing about Internet video… old television ads for the Citroën AX.

While some analysts (who might be sitting on large quantities of GM and Ford stock ) already dream of a sales rate between 15 and 16 million cars by year’s end in the U.S., CEOs of European carmakers are less gung ho.

Developing new cars costs a good deal of money. Developing new power trains costs a huge pile of money with unsure payback. So what do you do when you are on the bottom rungs of the Top Ten, or god forbid if you traipse around somewhere in the twenties and if you have neither the money to invest nor the volume to quickly amortize your investment? You find friends to share the burden. This is what PSA and BMW do.

The alleged Renault spy case is getting curiouser and curiouser. Renault is in full reverse. Renault CEO Patrick Pelata said information may have been leaked about the costs and economic model of the program, but all technical secrets are safe. “Not the smallest nugget of technical or strategic information on the innovation plan has filtered out of the enterprise.” So what, they are missing a spreadsheet?

We don’t know who gave which state secrets to whom at Renault. But now we know what everybody already suspected: “The Elysee has charged the DCRI (intelligence services) with an investigation. It is following a Chinese lead,” a French government source told Reuters.

If they find a smoking gun in China, then it’s war: Yesterday, France’s industry minister Eric Besson called the scandal “economic warfare.”

Reuters doesn’t know more, but found some highly suspicious activity:

France’s industry minister Eric Besson lashed out at those who may have attempted to steal EV secrets from the French automaker Renault using the language of international relations rather than economics. He tells RTL Radio [via Automotive News Europe [sub]]All I can tell you is that the matter seems serious, that it illustrates once again the risks our companies face in terms of industrial espionage, and economic intelligence, as we call it today. It is an overall risk for French industry. The expression ‘economic warfare’, sometimes extreme, is appropriate and this is something we should monitor in future.
To which ANE helpfully addsFrance has for some years been worried about potential attacks on its industrial secrets and even has a “school of economic warfare” aimed at rooting out economic subversion.But who is behind the alleged “economic warfare”? China is the obvious scapegoat in internet speculation, but thus far there is no proven connection between Renault’s suspended executives and any foreign company or country. The highest-ranking of the suspended execs, Michel Balthazard, was born and educated in France, and has been at Renault since 1980. And, according to French media reports, this may have less to do with foreign attackers than in-house rivalries…

PSA Peugeot-Citroen is feeling its oats again. PSA “remains open to equity alliances with other partner companies in its sector,” PSA CEO Philippe Varin told the Dow Jones newswire. Well, after recent mass weddings that had produced mixed nuptials between Volkswagen and Suzuki, Fiat and Chrysler, and even Renault-Nissan- Daimler threesomes, PSA is looking for a tie-up again. The trouble is: There aren’t many attractive partners left match.com of the international auto business.

Automotive News [sub] reports that three Renault executives, including one who works for the automaker’s electric vehicle development program, have been suspended without pay pending an industrial espionage investigation. According to a Renault source

[The investigation] involves people who were caught red-handed for industrial espionage. Renault is a victim in this story. The group is a bit worried about its electric vehicle program — it hopes that its leadership in this technology won’t be threatened.

The ritual torching of cars has become a New Year’s tradition in France. Last New Year ’s Eve, 1,137 cars went up in flames in France, a tad less than the 1,147 set ablaze the year before. This year? We’ll never know.

The AP [via The Freep] reports:

Denis Baupin, an environmental official in the mayor’s office, said Wednesday that sport utility vehicles and old diesel cars are likely to be targeted in upcoming test restrictions.

To any Parisian who drives an SUV, Baupin’s advice is: “Sell it and buy a vehicle that’s compatible with city life.

“I’m sorry, but having a sport utility vehicle in a city makes no sense,”

Five French cities are eying bans on inefficient classes of automobiles as they become “ZAPA”s, or Priority Zones for Action against Air Pollution. These areas include Paris, Lyon, Grenoble and Aix-en-Provence. France’s cities are some of the most congested and polluted in Europe, and older diesels as well as 4×4 vehicles are blamed for a disproportionate contribution to the problem. We simply hope that vintage Mustangs don’t get caught up in the Parisian guzzler ban.

The French parliament has taken a step toward significantly reducing the non-monetary penalties that accompany most speeding tickets. The National Assembly voted Thursday to diminish the amount of time that minor traffic violations affect a driver’s record, and consequently his insurance rates. The changes came in the form of a compromise amendment to a wide-ranging homeland security bill known by the acronym LOPSSI II.