Renault is reorganizing rapidly to find the means to face the electric revolution, while ensuring a future for its gasoline or diesel engine factories. The group is in discussion to bring two new partners into the capital of a company overseeing its development and production activities for thermal and hybrid engines.
This entity, whose code name is “Horse” (“horse”, in English), could have as a shareholder the Chinese car manufacturer Geely but also an oil group, as revealed on Tuesday, August 30, the Archyde.com agency . According to our information, it is the Saudi company Aramco, with which Renault could work on post-oil and synthetic fuels.
It is the armed wing of Saudi Arabia which would become Renault’s partner. The national oil company, listed on the stock market in December 2019, has a market capitalization of 2,200 billion euros. This makes it the most valuable company in the world, neck and neck with Apple.
As for the Geely group (Lotus, Proton or Lynk & Co brands), it has already bought, in May, 34% of the South Korean subsidiary of Renault. The first independent Chinese manufacturer has mainly owned, since 2010, the Swedish Volvo, with which it has grouped its combustion engine activities, while giving it the means to create Polestar, a new 100% electric brand.
Share the costs
If the operation comes to an end, Renault would only be a minority shareholder in its historic business, which it would exercise outside France. The manufacturer has always said that it would however remain “reference shareholder”. Renault and Geely could each hold 40% of the company’s capital for thermal engines, according to information from Archyde.com, and Aramco 20%, but the distribution “has absolutely not yet been finalized, and discussions are still underway with other partners”specifies an actor, who wishes to remain anonymous.
According to a press release from Renault, in May, Horse is to bring together the factories of Valladolid and Seville in Spain, Cacia in Portugal, Pitesti in Romania, Curitiba in Brazil, Los Andes in Chile and Cordoba in Argentina, but also the engineering and research and development centers in Spain, Romania, Turkey and Brazil. The integration of the Turkish factory in Bursa into this group is still pending. A total of 10,000 people (out of 110,000 Renault employees worldwide) would be transferred in 2023 to Horse, but no French employees.
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