Time is money and in the automotive industry this couldn’t be more true. One of the ways recently used to bring down the price of new cars is to make their construction simpler and more efficient. Renault achieved this with your new Renault 5.
The Renault 5 is a huge bet for the French brand. In addition to appealing to nostalgia, with the shapes of a sales success from other times, it has an appealing entry-level price, around 25 thousand euros, when most trams are well above 30 thousand. The trick? Something similar to what Tesla is looking for. Increase construction efficiency and therefore reduce time.
The faster the construction, the more the price can drop
Gilles Le Borgne, Renault’s Technology Director, stated, quoted by Automotive News Europe, that the Renault 5 is manufactured in less than 10 hours, a significant reduction compared to the 14 hours required for a Clio with an internal combustion engine. This efficiency is noteworthy in the context of small vehicle production in Europe, where between 12 and 18 hours are typically required to manufacture these vehicles.
The next objective is even more ambitious. Renault aims to build the fully electric Twingo in “much less” than 10 hours. This way, Renault can achieve its objective of keeping the Twingo below 20,000 euros.
Le Borgne explained how this price reduction can be achieved:
“There are two indicators. The first is DST (standard design time), which is the time it takes for workers to assemble the parts. Using concurrent engineering (a method of product design and development in which different phases take place simultaneously, rather than consecutively), we made the R5 very quick and easy to assemble.
The second indicator is DSTr, which is the ratio between direct labor and non-direct labor. For us, this ratio is around 2.0. In a way, DSTr shows the efficiency of the manufacturing system. The total assembly time results from the multiplication of DST and DSTr. With the R5, we plan on about 4.6 hours in DST. When multiplied by the DSTr factor of 2.0, the result is less than 10 hours.”
Tesla is looking for something even more ambitious
This is something similar to what Tesla intends to do. The brand announced in 2020 that it intended to put an electric vehicle on the market worth 25 thousand dollars. But for Tesla to achieve this, it has a plan that could revolutionize the way cars are built.
Cars have changed a lot since the Ford Model T, whose construction began in 1913, with an innovative way of building cars: series assembly. With many changes in between, the basis of the process has remained the same since then. Tesla officials say this process is inefficient and have a plan to change the way cars are manufactured.
Tesla aims for a 40% reduction in production area and a 50% reduction in production costs. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, cited in the Automotive News article, the savings value will be around 33%, which is still a value to take into account. It is yet another path that brands take to become even more competitive.
Renault, with a different approach to building its new asset, achieves important gains and now presents competitive values. The French brand is not messing around and “Renaulution”, a strategic plan implemented in 2021, is being felt more and more, either in the proposals that in the way all the work is done.
Tests: see the tests of new cars carried out by Auto+ journalists (Click here)
