Inside Renault's recycling factory

DW (English)

Renault is increasingly recycling EVs in a factory just outside of Paris. That might attract new clients – but won't be the panacea to falling car sales in general.

Transcript

00:00We take the old machines, separate the stator from the water, rebalance the pieces, inspect them,

00:06change some parts and do the necessary trials. Then the piece gets back on the market.

00:12With the same guarantee as a brand new one. This 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 sites.

00:26Since April 2024, it's fully dedicated to recycling, mostly of cars with combustion engines

00:33and also increasingly electric cars. 30 people are remaking EV spare parts out of 250 working

00:40in this unit. They only recently started reconditioning electric vehicle engine parts.

00:47This product is 30% cheaper than a new one. This helps us reach new clients who have less money

00:54and 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. This 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

01:22and will, as a result, end up here. The upcoming legislation banning cars with

01:29combustion engines at one point will mean that 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.

01:46The 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. That means batteries are becoming more sophisticated and bigger,

02:14and so we need to keep up with these developments.

02:18Only about 10% of the vehicles that Renault sells are now electric,

02:22and second-hand EVs are 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 the

02:35first place. But the EV market is extremely slow. Sales in France are stagnating. In Germany,

02:41they're declining. However, 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 20% this year.

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