Renault announces 3 new electric vehicles coming to the Chinese market

China is getting all the EVs. Renault announces today its product plan for the Dongfeng Renault Automotive Company (DRAC), its Chinese joint-venture with Dongfeng, and confirmed that 3 new electric vehicles will join its lineup by 2022.

They announced plans to increase production to 400,000 vehicles in the country through a new lineup of 9 vehicles, including the 3 new EVs.

Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of Groupe Renault, said:

“We recognize China as the world’s largest auto market and as a global trendsetter in the mobility of the future and that is why we have made it a strategic priority for growth in Groupe Renault’s new mid-term plan, ‘Drive the Future.’ Together with Dongfeng Group, we have the resources, scale and technologies to support DRAC’s sustainable growth in the Chinese market.”

François Provost, SVP and Chairman of Asia-Pacific Operations for Groupe Renault and CEO of DRAC, said that the brand will focus on SUVs and battery-electric vehicles:

“Over the past 4 years, DRAC has become a full value chain company with an encouraging start thanks to the passion of our 2500 employees and the support of our dealers and suppliers. With our 2022 Vision, we will deliver sustainable growth based on the uniqueness of our Renault Brand with a focus on SUVs and battery electric vehicles,”

The vehicles are expected to be unveiled in the next few years and all be on the market before 2022.

Electrek’s Take

As automakers are almost all focusing on their electric vehicle efforts in China, it looks like the country is soon about to have the most extensive EV lineup of any market.

Of course, that’s because of the country’s zero-emission mandate, which forces automakers to have zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) represent 10% of new car sales as soon as 2019 and 12% by 2020. There was an 8% requirement in 2018 that was recently canceled.

The mandate pushed VW, Daimler, Toyota, Ford, and GM to all announce joint-ventures to produce electric vehicles in China over the last year.

The Renault-Nissan alliance also announced a new joint-venture just for EVs – again with Dongfeng, which makes this new EV effort with Renault’s main Chinese venture a double EV push in the country for the French automaker. They will be releasing EVs under two brands in the market.

Hopefully, automakers will leverage their EV efforts in China to offer new models in other markets too.

In the case of Renault, it looks like it since it recently announced that it will launch 8 more all-electric vehicles within the next 5 years. If those 3 new EVs through DRAC count, it would leave 5 other EVs for its other markets.