• 2 days ago
The French automaker has put one of its old factories to new uses, establishing a recycling hub for electric vehicles. The revived plant is attracting new clients but is unlikely to make up for Renault's falling sales.

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00:00We take the old machines, separate the stator from the water, rebalance the pieces, inspect
00:06them, change some parts and do the necessary trials.
00:09Then the piece gets back on the market.
00:12With the same guarantee as a brand new one.
00:14This helps us save about 80% of raw materials.
00:20The factory in Flans, just outside Paris, used to be one of Renault's biggest car production
00:25sites.
00:26In April 2024, it's fully dedicated to recycling, mostly of cars with combustion engines and
00:33also increasingly electric cars.
00:3630 people are remaking EV spare parts out of 250 working in this unit.
00:41They only recently started reconditioning electric vehicle engine parts.
00:47This product is 30% cheaper than a new one.
00:51This helps us reach new clients who have less money and can't afford a new electric vehicle.
01:01In the next building, dozens of people are refitting second-hand vehicles or repairing
01:06cars damaged in accidents.
01:08This part of the factory started operating in 2021.
01:12About 15% of the vehicles here are electric.
01:17There will be more and more electric cars on the road, which will need to be retrofitted
01:23and will, as a result, end up here.
01:26The upcoming legislation, banning cars with combustion engines at one point, will mean
01:32that more people will want to buy second-hand EVs.
01:37Some of the employees here have received lengthy training to work on electric cars.
01:42They need special clearances for high voltage, for instance.
01:48The batteries arrive here from our commercial partners in containers for dangerous items.
01:57In this workshop, 15,000 EV batteries have been repaired since 2011.
02:04The technology used for electric cars keeps evolving, especially as clients are asking
02:09for longer ranges.
02:11That means batteries are becoming more sophisticated and bigger, and so we need to keep up with
02:16these developments.
02:18Only about 10% of the vehicles that Renault sells are now electric, and second-hand EVs
02:24are unlikely to make up for a slump in car sales more widely.
02:30To be able to provide reconditioned electric vehicles, more new ones need to be sold in
02:35the first place.
02:36But the EV market is extremely slow.
02:39Vehicles in France are stagnating, in Germany they are declining.
02:45However, Renault will continue to bank on recycling electric cars.
02:50That will soon represent a quarter of all activity in the spare parts unit, up from
02:5520% this year.
02:59We aim to increase our activity by 50% until 2030.
03:04We will hire 30 more people over the coming two years, with a large part of them working
03:08on spare parts of electric cars, and we will double our investments.
03:15Hoping that the future will indeed be electric, even if the heyday of cars is likely to be
03:21over.

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