In this week's round-up of automotive gossip, we chat EVs with Renault's planning boss, VW's naming ambitions for its first electric car, Citroen's idea of "unconventional" design and more.
Renault's EV plans go back further than you think
The Renault Twingo was due to be electric from its 2014 launch, it has been revealed. Product planning boss Ali Kassai said: “We originally planned to launch an electric Twingo at the beginning and then we saw that there were no [charging] stations, so we slowed down. And then we had Zoe and we had ambitious plans for that.” An electric Twingo will finally arrive next year.
Numbers are the name of the game at VW
Volkswagen never considered names for its ID models, instead choosing to use numbers. VW sales chief Jürgen Stackmann said: “We wanted to have a brand identity. All cars are ID. The connection is: electric equals ID.” He added that the number three – assigned to the first ID model – gives VW space to go both up and down in the line-up.
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coolboy
Ali's talk
How interesting... So Renault figured out that they needed to can the Twingo Electric because there were no charging stations... but there were enough for the Zoe! Interesting. In Paris there were (and are) plenty of them from Blue'Lib at least.
Just talk, with the pricing they have going for the Zoe, they would have to go for peanuts money on the Twingo and that would bring a serious burden for the brand accounts. Now with the increasing fleet requirements in terms of emissions, there's simply no other way, it will always be spending money, one way or another. This way, they could move metal into the retail side...
coolboy
Ali's talk
How interesting... So Renault figured out that they needed to can the Twingo Electric because there were no charging stations... but there were enough for the Zoe! Interesting. In Paris there were (and are) plenty of them from Blue'Lib at least.
Just talk, with the pricing they have going for the Zoe, they would have to go for peanuts money on the Twingo and that would bring a serious burden for the brand accounts. Now with the increasing fleet requirements in terms of emissions, there's simply no other way, it will always be spending money, one way or another. This way, they could move metal into the retail side...
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