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Geely and Oil Group Will Buy Renault's Combustion Engine Division, According to Reuters

Renault announced in January 2021 that it had a plan to cease being a carmaker. Its goal was to become a technology company that also happens to manufacture and sell vehicles. Renault called this plan Renaulution. We only did not learn at the time how the French company was planning to get rid of its engines. According to Reuters, it will sell the division responsible for them.
Reuters states that Renault may sell its combustion engine company to Geely 15 photos
Photo: Renault and Geely
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That is an entirely new development. With Renaulution, Renault divided its operations into four business units: Renault, Dacia-Lada, Alpine, and Mobilize. At the time, Russia had not invaded Ukraine, which forced Renault to sell Lada for one rouble, so the Dacia-Lada unit is just Dacia now. Still, Renault had not revealed at the time that its business division would be more complex than that.

In April 2022, Renault said it would have two main divisions: Ampere and Horse. Ampere would obviously take care of electric mobility, while Horse would take care of combustion engines. Renault already disclosed back then that it wanted to have a minority stake in the new division, which sounds the wrong way to frame what Horse was supposed to be. For it to have a minority share of the enterprise, it would have to be a company, preferably a public one.

Reuters apparently discovered who was willing to buy Horse. It seems that Geely and an oil group would be interested in purchasing the most significant chunk of the combustion engine company. Renault would become its biggest customer for as long as it needed these mills, whether for regular vehicles or hybrids.

Geely already is a Renault partner in South Korea and China. The two carmakers signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in August 2021 to produce “vehicles based on Lynk & Co’s energy-efficient vehicle platforms” in South Korea. The document also aims to help Renault expand in China with Geely’s assistance.

Strategically speaking, the deal makes a lot of sense for Renault. It separates itself from something that is slated to disappear. Being a company owned mainly by the French government, it also frees itself from the political burden of eventually having to fire the folks making internal combustion engines or components in France. As far as we know, it is already transforming its French facilities to make EV components. Those ICE units produced in Latin America, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Turkey will keep going to Renault cars for as long as they need these parts.
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Editor's note: The gallery presents images Geely and Renault platforms.

About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
Gustavo Henrique Ruffo profile photo

Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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