IVOTY Report
FLEXIBLE FRIENDS
Renault Group and Volvo Group flex their corporate muscle in new EV joint-venture with CMA CGM, writes George Barrow
THE COMMON GOOD
Listening to Luca de Meo and Martin Lundstedt, the CEOs of Renault Group and Volvo Group, speak for nearly two hours, presenting and answering questions on their new joint venture there were many important messages to take away but a few things de Meo said really struck a chord with me for their overarching altruism. Firstly, he said: “There is a tendency to confuse CO2 with pollution. CO2 is a global problem, pollution is concentrated in urban areas.” He later followed up with: “You have to see this project as an initiative from a bunch of entrepreneurs who are trying to push the European economy.”
Remember these are the CEOs of huge corporations who have responsibilities to shareholders to think about, but the focus is on the environment and society. Granted, a successful joint venture will please investors but the pair genuinely seemed just as intent on solving wider collective problems from the economic threat posed by developing nation states to noise pollution or engine emissions, as they were on launching a new van brand. Yet, the most striking statement, underlined in my notes, was: “When you do something that is right, you are never wrong”. Although it was said in reference to customers, it felt like they were words to live by.
(L - R) Rodolphe Saadé, Chairman & CEO of CMA CGM, Martin Lundstedt, CEO & President of Volvo Group, Luca de Meo, CEO of Renault Group
George Barrow is the UK jury member for the International Van of the Year Award.
being designed for applications far beyond how we conventionally view today’s vans. At present, the majority of electric vans launched are conversions of ICE vehicles, utilising the same chassis and much of the hardware but replacing engines and gearboxes for motors and batteries. The next generation of fully electric vans will, though, be radically different. Mercedes- Benz is promising a multi-application platform with their VAN.EA project, while Kia revealed its intentions for its range of PBV (Purpose Built Vehicles) using a scalable chassis with ambitions to integrate it fully into the architecture of a modern city. OEMs are waking up to the possibility that the traditional solutions currently employed might not be the answers going forward and are taking the transition away from fossil fuels as an opportunity to re-invent the wheel – so to speak.
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That certainly appears to be the intention of the latest planned entry into
22 WhatVan?May 2024
e are entering a new age of purpose-built electric vehicles, many of which are
the commercial vehicle space, Flexis, an entirely new venture formed between Renault Group, Volvo Group and global logistics and shipping company CMA CGM to develop dedicated EV platforms for commercial vehicles. “This is a revolutionary project. There is space for disruption,” says Luca de Meo, CEO of Renault Group. “It’s a family of products, the classical
vans, and the things you can completely reform, because there is a way of building, Lego-like customisation. [It will be a] really unique product which you will see doesn’t [already] exist, designed for last mile delivery. It’s very tall and very short, the size of a Kangoo small van, the cargo capacity of a mid-van and it turns like a car because you don’t have an engine in the front,” de Meo explained at the launch event that took place last month. Renault, which has been a dominant force in European van sales for several decades, will partner with Volvo Group – specifically Renault Trucks, which already sells Renault vans through its dealer network – with a healthy dose of real-world desires coming from French
firm CMA CGM, which already operates fleets of electric vehicles. “Partnership is the new leadership.
You can have great equipment, but in the equation if you don’t have Infrastructure x Green Energy x TCO x sustainable supply chain, it will not happen. If one of these parameters is zero, [the answer to the equation] is zero. Therefore, we need to partner up,” explains Martin Lundstedt, CEO and president of Volvo Group. “We have the Renault brand in common that we can start with now, but there are different opportunities. We don’t have a volume issue, we already have the backbone scale in the value chain from supply, industrialisation, product knowledge, service, service network and customer base,” Lundstedt adds.
The resulting product will be a skateboard design intended to dramatically reduce ownership and usage costs for operators by as much as 30%.
“Imagine in the life cycle of such a product people spend between €100,000 (£86,000) and €120,000
www.whatvan.co.uk
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