Renault is a tall man with feet of clay

In the (glorious) era of Carlos Ghosn, the Renault team was racing for volume. And managed to beat its own records with Nissan, its Alliance partner. The record began in 2018 with 3.88 million cars registered worldwide. Since then, it has been a retreat. The new management ensures that comfortable margins are preferred over volume for volume. But a nearly 50% drop in 4 years is impressive.

For 2022, the Renault group sees its worldwide registrations drop by 5.9% to exactly 2,051,174 units. The Renault brand registered 1,088,836 passenger cars, a decrease of 8.3%. The Renault Korea Motors (ex-Samsung) brand fell 11.1% to 51,083 vehicles, but is recovering in its domestic market and should, we hope, get off to a good start.

The good news comes from Alpine, which grew by 33.3% to 3,546 vehicles (including 2,872 vehicles in the European Union) and especially Dacia, which grew by 13.2% worldwide to 569,208 vehicles registered in 2022. passenger cars alone, the Renault group “only” fell by 2% to 1,719,735 vehicles. Utility vehicles punished the group with a drop of 21.9%! From 424,301 to 331,439 registered VU.

The Renault group remains European-centric and even Franco-centric. The group has registered 470,280 vehicles (PC+LCV) in France, i.e. 25% of its total registrations in 2022. The leading market outside of Europe extended to Turkey is Brazil, the 5th largest market, with 126,689 vehicles. Europe represents 1,320,875 units in 2022, or 64.4% of group sales.

Addiction to one area is obviously fatal. In Europe, the group was down 7.4% and not Latin America at +7.9%, and EurAsia (without Russia) at +2.4% could make up for their relatively low volumes.

The group wants to believe in reassembled

In, for example, electricity sales for the Renault brand. Renault for a long time alone (or almost) with its Zoe is 3rd in the electrified market (electric vehicles, HEV hybrids and PHEV rechargeable hybrids without mHEV micro-hybrids) seeing rechargeable hybrid that skates the same when electrics grow. This segment is high value added and is good for the financial balance sheet.

Renault is also seeing an increase in its C-segment registrations thanks to the Arkana and Mégane E-Tech Electric. Arkana 82,220 sales in 2022 in Europe. A great success that should be confirmed in 2023. Because the best-selling Renault vehicle (the brand) is the Clio 5 with 147,842 units in Europe in 2022, ahead of the Captur with 137, 235 units. High value added engines are not necessarily the most sold of these vehicles.

Dacia should continue to grow in Europe with models that have the image of a smart buy (or good value for money) while it was a “basic” car a few years ago. The Sandero at €7,900 (10 years ago) is over! The Sandero starts at €11,490 today with probably a better margin than 10 years ago.

So we continue to wonder where the Renault brand will go as Dacia seems to be carving out cruppers for it. It seems that the Renault Management group continues to think that in order to raise the image of Renault it is necessary to sacrifice the popularity that one leaves behind in Dacia. However, for many years Renault (like Citroën) was able to sell the Renault 4L and 4 alongside the Renault 30 with a V6 engine. A great distance to walk without the image suffering.

So should we sacrifice Renault sales to sell more Renault?

Renault 2022 team registrations worldwide