Friday 5 July 2013

Renault driving French infrastructure


AutoblogGreen reports that Renault continues to try to kickstart sales of its all-electric Zoe with public-private partnership agreements that will improve France's electric-vehicle charging infrastructure.

The automaker has reached an agreement with SyDEV, which operates the electric utilities in the coastal Vendee region about 250 miles southwest of Paris. Renault and SyDEV will work together on deploying 350 publicly accessible electric-vehicle charging stations across 191 towns between 2014 and 2016. The region, located near the Atlantic Ocean, is home to about 600,000 people.

Renault and sister company Nissan have been leading the OEM charge for EV adoption but so far are falling short of their goals. While Leaf sales have jumped in the US this year, Renault has sold about 25,000 EVs, mostly Twizy and Kangoo models. Renault-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn famously set a goal of selling a combined 1.5 million EVs by 2016.

Meanwhile, the French Minister of Industrial Renewal Amaud Montebourg said last September that the country would be home to "the electric revolution." France has offered tax credits worth around 9,000 euros for buyers of EVs like the Renault Zoe.