For the past few years, Renault has been undergoing a major change in every aspect possible. In this process, Renault has shaken off the image of “that obscure French car”. This comes as a result of the last 5 years where the French brand completely reshaped their offerings to the market.
To help us understand this better, we sat down with Marwan Haidamous, Managing Director of Renault Middle East where he took us through what Renault has been up to in the past five years and what the next five years look like for Renault.
“Five years ago our market share was 2% this year it will be 5%”. This is how our conversation with Marwan started, confidence and optimism about the future of Renault is very evident. “When we compare sales numbers from 5 years ago with today, our sales numbers have multiplied by 3” Marwan went on to explain how these numbers came about, “There is a story behind these numbers, there is a strategy, partners, products, teams, it was a very big effort. The first step was the lineup.”
The Renault lineup has evidently changed over the past few years. Renault shed their image of being “an average car for the average person” and have become much more modern and actually attractive looking cars that share very similar DNA while keeping their own unique identity. This helped the French brand regain the acceptance of the market. Renault managed to also understand the changing market quickly and adapt to it even quicker. Moving towards digital was a big thing with Renault, as they were the first brand to introduce the digital showroom and the first to introduce the concept of a live showroom. This allows potential customers to see the car, understand it, get all the information they need, and even book the car online. Marwan went on to explain that the digitization does not stop there, “We also introduced a new concept of CRM with the My Renault App, which allows you to manage all your needs from the dealership and all product related needs including shopping for accessories for your Renault”
After grasping what Renault went through in the past 5 years, we could not help but wonder what do the next 5 years look like for Renault. Marwan explained that they plan to carry forward with this momentum of innovation, “For the next 5 years Renault will focus on bringing to the market connected cars, electric cars, and autonomous cars. Which is the future of Renault within the plan of Drive the Future 2022 where we will bring 8 fully electric cars, 12 plug-in hybrids, fully connected cars, and of course level 2 autonomous cars that will be first introduced in Europe”
On the note of electric cars, Marwan went into detail on how the Twizzy and ZOE performed since their introduction into the market. “ZOE is currently the best-selling electric car in Europe with 25% market share, and it is doing very well when exported to other countries. However, electric cars do not have spontaneous demand from the customers yet, the technology needs to be heavily supported by manufacturers and government bodies in order to do well. We can see that in the UAE things are moving forward with electric cars, especially with Fleet sales to DEWA and other customers, but if we want to see an increase in the market share in the Middle East, we need to be patient as this is still an evolving sector in this market.” Marwan explain how legislation in the Middle East is helping bringing electric cars to the mainstream where Dubai is providing support with free Salik and free charging until 2020, along with many other countries reducing customs on electric cars. In short, things are slowly moving, but in the right direction.
Moving to the other side of the spectrum, Marwan assured us that they would still feed the Petrol-head in all of us, “In October the Meganne R.S will be available for sale in Dubai, and a few months after that, we would be able to bring the Alpine. These products that link between our lineup and our racing development, will definitely be introduced in the Middle East.”
To sum it all up, It was clear to see that Renault is focused on being an industry leader when it comes to innovation while maintaining their roots in the racing and performance sector. In the Middle East, where the biggest innovation is connectivity, Renault customers expect an almost entirely digital car ownership experience. This gives us a clearer picture of who Renault customers are, they are a futuristic young group of people that find it important to be able to access information about their car at any given time. However, this does not distance Renault from the other side of the automotive spectrum, the brand is still heavily involved in racing and performance development. Just like there are two different sides to the same coin.