Renault and Nissan have stepped up their race with Tesla to power electric cars

Renault and Nissan aim to be among the first cars to sell 1m electric vehicles using a unified battery system, placing them alongside Tesla and Volkswagen as leaders in the industrial sector.

Luca de Meo, CEO of Renault, made the announcement this week on FT The future of the Auto Summit, adding that partners were in talks to normalize the battery modules used in electric cars.

It is a sign that the broken alliance is often healing under the new management, led by former partner Carlos Ghosn, who was arrested in 2018 after being arrested on charges of financial conduct.

“If we could get a very synergistic approach to battery life, the alliance would probably be one of the first to exceed the threshold of one million cars sold in the same battery module,” De Meo said.

Reducing complexity and cost is key for automakers as they try to reduce the price of battery cars while raising the profit margins they sell.

Today, Renault and Nissan create batteries separately, but Ashwani Gupta, Nissan’s chief executive, said the next-generation technology will be an “ordinary battery” for the pact, including Mitsubishi.

“If we make a battery for 10m cars with the same chemistry, the same structure, the same sourcing, it will definitely move forward,” he said at the virtual summit.

The alliance plans to position the team at a moving distance from VW, which plans to sell 1m electric or hybrid cars this year, although half of them will be battery-only.

Tesla, which sells only electric cars, is increasing production of its electric vehicles after being close to delivering 500,000 units last year.

Ford and Stellantis during the three-day FT ceremony, car drivers were warned to get out of the cars by going too fast to electric vehicles.

Ford’s European president Stuart Rowley said more cooperation is needed with governments, energy companies and charging teams to encourage wider adoption of battery cars, as well as lowering the price so that current car buyers can afford the models.

“It needs to be addressed at the ministerial level, but it needs to involve both local and national government, suppliers and industry stakeholders,” he said.

“If we don’t succeed, people will keep older vehicles, more polluting vehicles. We can’t leave people behind.”

There were also warnings to tighten the clean materials needed to make the batteries if motorists proceeded with their intentions to decarbonize the fleet.

While automakers are trying to find materials in a decarbonized manner, Tomas Nauclér, McKinsey, told the FT event that there would be a risk of a shortage of clean source parts.

He expected a shortage of materials such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel or iron ore in the second half of the decade, as new processes to reduce emissions from extraction or processing led miners to make increased sales.

“We will see a tightening of green materials in the second half of this decade, probably in the next decade as well,” he said. “The next five years will be crucial in whether we see enough supply coming fast enough.”