#france

It’s no secret that I’m a bit doubtful about the runaway success of the all-electric vehicle. The infrastructure obstacles are just too great. There is one market where plug-ins make sense: Light delivery vehicles. Never cruise too far from the warehouse. Can be charged while van is being loaded. Lots of regenerative braking. Mitsubishi and PSA think the same. They will co-develop a compact commercial electric vehicle for the European market. Production will begin by 2012, says The Nikkei [sub].

Once upon a time, the Maximum one declared that bringing diesels to the United States would only be possible by the use of urea. You know, the stuff that is is the main nitrogen-containing substance in the urine of mammals. Which can also reduce the NOx from diesel exhaust. Using urea would allow diesels to meet Tier II Bin 5 standards. The Maximum one further decreed that the extra cost of this after treatment system would make diesels prohibitively expensive. (Unless the driver uses man-made urea, but let’s not even go there.) Then, he mentioned the California standards which were way tougher than Tier II Bin 5. This would effectively kill diesels in the US as they wouldn’t be 50 state compliant. Then Volkswagen introduced the TDI Jetta which was 50 state compliant. What made this extra special was that Volkswagen did it without using any urea after treatment. Something which Bob Lutz said wasn’t possible. There was a diesel hurdle that was gone. Who else could be bringing diesels to the United States?

Autocar reports that Renault workers in France are jumping on a bus and heading to the Paris Motor Show. Are the doing it because they fancy a day out? Maybe they want to see all the nice cars on display? Nope, they’re going there to protest. OK, so who do you think they are going to protest? Hyundai? Toyota? Ford? Nope. They’re protesting against Renault. So, a bunch of French Renault workers are going to the Paris Motor Show to protest against their own company? Why?

Yesterday, I wrote about how GM had beaten the French and made them concede benefits in return for job security. Well, it seems that the French got their own back on GM in a round about sort of way. Bloomberg reports that Opel sales in France dropped a massive 30 percent to 6,462 units in July. This doesn’t bode well for Nick Reilly, head of GM’s European division, as he tries to make Opel attractive enough for the corporate mothership to finance a turnaround with American taxpayers’ money. Shall we take a closer look at the French sales figures…?

Yes, there were abortive attempts to rename French Fries to Freedom Fries (you want ketchup with your freedom?) There were calls for a boycott of all things French, including French mustard, excluding French’s Mustard (and maybe the Statue of Liberty.) Nevertheless, I think deep down the Americans secretly admire the French. With their lavish welfare system, generous benefits and their willingness to strike if someone so much as asks them to work an hour outside of their contract, who wouldn’t want to be French?

Hell, in the UK we wish we could be like them. If we were we might still have some global companies in our ownership, instead of selling out to the first bidder. But as Peter Schiff ( who I’ve mentioned before) said, the party is over, we have to stop paying ourselves these lavish benefits, allow the free market to function and stop being lazy. In the UK, the government is going on a massive austerity program in order to balance the books, Italy pushed through a huge €24b cost cutting plan and even Spain just managed to push through a €15b budget reduction plan by a majority of just one vote. France hasn’t made a cost cutting plan of their own. It’s almost as if the current economic turmoil doesn’t apply to them. French benefits have survived recessions before and they’ll survive this one, right? Well, don’t be so sure. It seems that the French may be coming around to the rest of the world’s thinking, and the message to change their ways is coming from an unlikely source. General Motors.

A few months ago, I wrote about a concept car which Peugeot showcased at the Geneva Motor Show. It was going to emit small levels of CO2, sip diesel, rather than drink it, and have more power than Ferdinand Piech. Everyone was sceptical as concepts rarely turn out they way they were planned once marketing, accountants and managers have had their way with the car. Well, something funny happened….

Volkswagen, Daimler, Audi, BMW: Despite tanking sales in Europe, they all report record numbers. Why? Exports and a weak Euro. It’s not just a German thing. Same across the Rhine: Agence France Press (via Google News) reports that Renault is very bullish on the back of strong sales in the first half of 2010. Renault is up an amazing 21.6 percent to 1.35 million vehicles. Growth of 21.6 percent is good in Renault’s eyes as they claimed that the global market grew 16 percent. Meaning: Renault gained global market share.

You take some of my rescued state-owned automaker, and I’ll take some of yours. That seems to be the cunning plan cooked up by presidents Putin and Sarkozy, as the two face the prospect of rescuing struggling firms in the midst of a weak European market. And actually, it seems that the idea was really Putin’s. French-owned automaker Renault is “more than happy” with its 25 percent stake in the moribund Russian automaker AvtoVAZ, reports Bloomberg, but Russia is offering to buy 15 percent of the French firm if France in turn takes on more AvtoVAZ equity. Considering that Reanult paid $1b for 25 percent of a firm that has been kept alive only by government intervention, a closer embrace of VAZ does not seem advisable. Nor, frankly, does any form of “Franco-Russian Leyland” sound like a good idea.

“Flirtation between Nissan and GM has a rich history,” said our Dear Leader. Here we go again. This time, with the whole cabal. Renault’s Ghosn has put an entry in the Match.com of the auto trade. Reuters says that Renault could work closely with a U.S. partner if the occasion arose, but it is not crucial. Not only is Renault flirtatious, they make it sound like it’s a no strings attached kind of a thing. It never is …

The car was the champ of the German Abwrackprämien-mania of 2009: Retire your clunker, collect €2000, and for just €5000 of pocket-change, you get a real car with a real trunk and 4 doors: The Dacia Logan. The car, built in Renault’s Romanian subsidiary sold more than 150,000 units ion Germany since its introduction. It drove car executives bonkers, and engineers to their workstations to design low-cost cars. Now, it’s being pulled off the market. The reason?

After on-again and off-again attempts at an Eurasian marriage ( which I would unreservedly endorse,) Mitsubishi and PSA are doing the thing currently en vogue in Europe: Live happily in sin, and produce little ones. Very little ones.

A year ago I reported how Renault was using French Government money in exchange for keeping jobs in France. Then Renault landed themselves in trouble when Renault wanted to transfer production of the Clio to Turkey and the French Government made their feelings quite clear. Then they started slagging other low cost countries off. Now it appears Renault are at it again, only this time they may succeed.

Renault has made a big splash with their el-cheapo Dacia in the European market. In the first 4 months of this year, 17 percent of Renault’s sales came from Nicolae Ceausescu’s former auto works in Romania. France’s PSA doesn’t want to take it any longer, and now plans for their own low-cost line.

Whoever said there’s no replacement for displacement? French Peugeot surely doesn’t think so. Brazil’s Bestcars makes us salivate with the news that Europe will get the chance to fawn over Peugeot’s new medium compact, the 308 GTI. And what do we get? Definitely not that one. The car has 200 hp and torque of 275 Nm. All from a puny 1.6L mill. That’s 125 horses per liter.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how the world largest “ democracy” is being built up to a global small car hub. It seems the car world has even bigger plans for the Asian tiger cub. Business Week reports that Renault is planning to double the number of parts it gets from India. Sudhir Rao, COO of Renault’s India unit says that Renault will buy about €250m ($317m) worth of parts from the Indian subsidiary. Renault isn’t the only company that is looking to India for cost savings. Naturally, where Renault goes, Nissan follows. But Fiat and Ford are also interesting in using Indian parts.