Groupe Renault - 2020 Universal Registration Document

86 GROUPE RENAULT I UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2020 Find out more at group.renault.com 01 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT GROUPE RENAULT a phase of study of consumer needs and constraints, which, from P April 2020, will be followed by the study of charging technologies and their integration into infrastructure; a phase of on-site demonstration of seven technologies from the P second half of 2022 until the end of the project; a dynamic induction charging system in urban areas in Paris, P France, high-power charging systems on the outskirts of Tallinn in P Estonia, optimized bi-directional smart charging in Amsterdam and P Utrecht in the Netherlands, a dynamic induction charging system in peri-urban/long-range P areas in Versailles in France, a charging hub in a car-sharing car park on the outskirts of P Turin in Italy, bi-directional low-power charging (including two-wheelers) and P static induction charging in taxiways at Zaragoza airport and central railway station in Spain. In view of the need to test charging technologies in real conditions and to structure the ecosystem as a whole, Groupe Renault was keen to take part in a call for projects from the European Commission. Within that framework, the Group worked to create a consortium. Some 30 carmakers, universities, institutes, cities, start-ups and SMEs responded positively to the initiative, with a shared desire to promote electromobility in Europe through testing focused on electric vehicle users. The approach is highly customer-centric and will make it possible to build a new ecosystem and design charging technologies that can be easily rolled out to encourage the development of electromobility in Europe. The INCIT-EV project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 875683. The INCIT-EV project consortium was initiated and coordinated by Groupe Renault. In this capacity, Groupe Renault serves as the interface between the European Commission and all partners, overseeing technical development, budgets and planning. New battery technologies for electric vehicles At the end of 2018, Alliance Ventures, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi venture capital fund, announced its participation in the last financing round by Enevate Corporation. Based in Irvine (California), this company specializes in the design of lithium-ion batteries. This is the latest investment by Alliance Ventures, which was launched this year to support the most innovative start-ups in next-generation systems for the automotive industry. The silicon-dominated lithium-ion batteries developed by Enevate offer ultra-fast charging capabilities and high energy density, at a reduced cost. They could potentially offer the shortest charging time out of all of the lithium-ion battery technologies currently available on the market. and development cooperation agreement between Ionic Materials and the Alliance. Based in Massachusetts, Ionic Materials is developing a polymer material that can be used as a substitute for the liquid electrolyte in “traditional” Li-ion cells and thus help improve the performance and economic efficiency of high-energy density batteries for automotive and many other applications. Alliance Ventures has also invested in Ionic Materials, a promising US company that is developing a polymer material whose properties could contribute to the development of so-called “solid state” cells. This investment coincides with the implementation of a research Partnerships Reinventing the automobile for the twenty-first century: a low-energy consumption vehicle, considerably lighter weight, connected and able to substitute in all or part for driver activities; this is a challenge that can only be met collectively. For Renault, collaborative R&D agreements contribute to accelerating the development of the technologies required to meet these challenges, and also to developing skills and cost-sharing. Such contracts are key to speeding up the introduction of innovations into vehicle projects. Cooperation In the competitive industrial world, performance and frugality are indispensable and inseparable to continue the race at the head of the pack. To open up toward the outside world, to capture the diverse knowledge and know-how of our manufacturing and academic partners at the highest level, combining these with ours, multiplies our capacity for innovation 10-fold, and enables costs to be shared. This method of collaborative innovation is encouraged by the public financers, both French and European. Public aid, such as subsidies and repayable advances, is an additional lever that helps accelerate our innovation. In this framework, Renault has always prioritized cooperative initiatives as part of our R&AE activities. These initiatives are an effective way of expanding our strategic plan. Renault’s cooperation budget is a multi-year figure of €180 million and covers cooperation both in France and Europe. Cooperation provides an opportunity to share costs and to access financial assistance for faster innovation. Ongoing collaborative projects were awarded financial assistance of €2.7 million in 2020, broken down into €2.65 million in subsidies and €85 thousand in repayable advances. In a global health crisis characterized by extensive telework, some demonstrations and tests had to be postponed, and the level of financial assistance was very exceptionally down in 2020 compared with 2019. In 2020 A portfolio of 74 subsidized projects was managed in 2020 using traditional methods (36% of the projects were more than 50% funded, with some 10% fully funded by financial backers). A total of 26 French and European projects were submitted over the year: 11 were accepted, eight were still being processed and seven were rejected. In addition, projects linked to the national support plan for the automotive sector were submitted to traditional financing mechanisms. In June 2020 Renault made submissions on: