Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Toyota's President Mr Hiroshi Okuda announced
that his group would begin exporting 20000 units
annually to North America and Europe starting
in 2000. In early 2010, world sales have attained
more than 1.5 million cars.
Is Prius project a success? Financially speak-
ing, considering the first steps of the magnitude of
initial investment into the project from the early
nineties until the early 2000s, it is questionable.
However, as of 2003-2004, when Prius II was
launched in the world, it took the road to com-
mercial success. Not only profitable, Prius project
has also brought to Toyota a sustained competitive
advantage in terms of ability to innovate in hybrids,
to address the segment of “green” consumers in
Japan, in Europe and in the US. Furthermore,
Toyota has improved the impact and attraction
of its brand image.
However, Carlos Ghosn, who gradually took
over Renault-Nissan CEO position from 2005,
wanted to be market out by a much more innova-
tive project than an eco-label. The meeting with
Shai Agassi, Better Place founder-CEO in January
2007 upon the strong recommendation of the Israël
President Shimon Peres, was the ideal opportunity
for Renault-Nissan to move quickly into EV.
What are the specificities of the Better Place
company? It defines itself as a global provider
of EV network and services. Shai Agassi got a
simple idea: instead of reloading battery for EV
which is time-consuming for the driver, it is much
more efficient to change of battery. Then battery
is not considered as part of the vehicle itself that
solves the discontinuity of service issue.
How Renault can integrate the new model
suggested by Better Place into its own strategy?
Instead of investing in hybrid solutions and trying
to directly compete with Toyota Prius and other
competitors models, it seems more coherent with
Renault history to use its past experience in EV
with EDF, especially by sharing risks between the
diverse project stakeholders: battery, reloading
system, electric infrastructure, EV construction,
etc. In early 2010, more than 40 partnership are
ongoing (power companies, governments, cit-
ies,…).
Renault has also a specific advantage in set-
ting up partnership like the Alliance with Nissan
has shown. Alliance between Nissan and Renault
was set up in 1999. After a decade, Renault held
44,3% of Nissan and Nissan held 15% of Renault.
The aim of the Alliance consists in implementing
industrial and commercial partnerships through
different projects; EV is one of them. Nissan
invested in ion-lithium battery through its JV
with NEC and Renault invested in EV itself.
Renault and Nissan invested together more than
600 millions euros in 3 years. Infrastructure and
reloading systems should be the responsibility of
other stakeholders. Better Place is one of them.
Altogether, from 2008, Renault-Nissan and Better
Place have signed partnerships with different gov-
•
A break-up strategy based on partner-
ships to make business models more agile:
Renault-Nissan with Better Place
After having experienced electric vehicle in
the seventies in partnership with EDF
17
, Renault
reinvested massively into EV in 2008 following
four recent trends: growing environmental interest
of consumers, demonstrated success of Prius, the
limited future growth of the European car markets,
and the recent technology improvement, linked
to an increase in battery performance allowing
an autonomy of 160 km (instead of 60 km in the
past). Before the EV in 2007, Renault set up a new
label called eco2. It aimed at leading customer's
choices towards cars that were integrating three
different environmental criteria:
•
CO
2
emissions lower than 140g/km or bio-
fuel use
•
manufactured in ISO 14001 certified plants
•
95% of car should be reused at the end of
its lifecycle and it should contains 5% of
recycled plastic material
