Renault, Nissan to Form Car Battery Venture With French State
By Laurence Frost
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Renault SA and alliance partner Nissan Motor Co. will develop and make electric-car batteries in a French government-backed joint venture with the country’s CEA energy research agency.
The FSI sovereign wealth fund will also buy a stake in the new company, Renault Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn and French Industry Minister Christian Estrosi said today at a news conference near the site of the planned 600 million-euro ($892 million) battery plant outside Paris.
“This will be the center of our lithium battery production for all of our assembly plants and for other carmakers,” Ghosn said. “It’s a major investment.”
The cost, weight and limited range of electric-car batteries are among the obstacles for automakers banking on mass demand for the vehicles. Ghosn’s Renault-Nissan alliance has already committed 4 billion euros of investment in planned electric cars. They include the Zoe subcompact to be built at the same site in Flins, northwest of the French capital, and introduced in 2012 with an annual sales target of 100,000 units.
Renault, France’s second-largest carmaker, will invest 180 million euros of cash and production assets in the new venture, Estrosi said. The FSI fund will provide 125 million euros for a stake that is to be determined.
The CEA will contribute 30 million euros, mainly in the form of patents on lithium battery technologies, said Jacques Verdonck, strategy director for Boulogne-Billancourt-based Renault, in an interview after the news conference.
Licensing Talks
Discussions are under way with AESC, a battery joint venture between Nissan and NEC Corp., over licences provisionally valued at 100 million euros to produce its batteries at Flins, he said. Ghosn also heads the Yokohama, Japan-based carmaker, which is 44 percent-owned by Renault.
The European Investment Bank is considering an application to provide half of the 280 million euros in loan financing that the venture will draw upon, Renault said.
Carmakers are competing to secure supplies of reliable and cost-effective batteries for electric vehicles and hybrids. PSA Peugeot Citroen, Renault’s larger domestic rival, said on Nov. 2 it signed an agreement with Sanyo Electric Co. to buy nickel- metal-hydride batteries for its future diesel-electric models.
The French government’s backing for the battery plant is part of a 1 billion-euro package of public spending announced last month to spur electric-car production, demand and charging networks.
Ghosn has predicted that 10 percent of global auto sales will be all-electric by 2020. France expects domestic electric- vehicle production to reach 2 million units the same year and generate at least 15 billion euros of annual economic output a decade later, Estrosi said Oct. 1.
At the previous month’s Frankfurt Motor Show, Renault unveiled the Zoe and three other electric vehicles it plans to introduce by 2012. Peugeot showed the iOn, a variant of Japanese affiliate Mitsubishi Motors Corp.’s i-MiEV model that the Paris- based carmaker is set to begin importing to Europe next year. |
