Renault has unveiled the senior management team for its EV and software subsidiary Ampere. Luca de Meo, currently CEO of the Renault Group, will personally take charge of the new management team, and two managers will join him to handle day-to-day operations.

Josep Maria Recasens and Vincent Piquet will be appointed Chief Operating Officer and Chief Finance Officer, respectively. Recasens worked at Seat for a long time (under de Meo, among others) before joining Renault in 2021. He was named Chief Strategy Officer in February 2023 and is in charge of the brand in Spain.

Piquet joined Renault in 2019 after a career at General Electric. He was appointed CFO of the Renault brand in 2022, reporting to de Meo and Thierry Piéton, CFO of Renault Group. “These appointments at the highest level of the Group will ensure the best support to execute Ampere’s innovative and profitable plan, including its envisioned initial public offering,” the French car manufacturer states.

“Luca de Meo’s impressive achievement in turning around the Renault Group makes us very confident: no one is better placed to drive the operational success of Ampere, pivotal for the Group and its future, in a transformed mobility landscape,” says Jean-Dominique Senard, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Renault Group.

There is also an update on the timetable: the IPO of Ampere is scheduled for the second half of 2023. Ampere will announce further details at a “dedicated Capital Markets Day” later this year. The exact date has yet to be communicated.

Preparatory work fulfilled

In his statement, Luca de Meo emphasizes the preparatory work of the past two years, which allows Ampere to start with a highly integrated EV supply chain. That means that Renault’s EV subsidiary can draw on existing production infrastructure from the start.

An example is the manufacturing ecosystem ElectriCity in northern France, where the Renault 5 and Renault 4 will be built. Up to 400 000 electric cars per year can be produced there, with 80% of suppliers expected to come from within a 300-kilometer radius.

“Combining the agility of a pure player with the strengths of an established OEM makes Ampere unique,” says de Meo. “Now, we go to execution mode. The more we focus, the more obvious the opportunities become for Ampere to spearhead the shift to electric and software.”

‘Ampere is a growth story’

“Ampere is a growth story, shooting for a 30% compounded annual revenue growth rate (CAGR) until 2030. With 80% of its investments already behind, it targets operating profit, free-cash-flow breakeven as early as 2025, and a double-digit margin in 2030,” says the press release.

The French carmaker highlights its goal of reducing costs by 40% on a car-by-car basis for the next generation of EVs (after 2027). Part of the levers allowing for this will already be embarked into the production of Renault 5 (2024) and Renault 4 (2025).

To reach this ambitious target, Ampere plans to explore current and upcoming battery technologies from sodium ion to solid state, to get around 90% battery-to-wheel e-powertrain efficiency, and to lower parts diversity by about 30%.

To push manufacturing productivity to the best levels, the aim is to reach less than ten hours of production time per vehicle by developing an innovative, cost-efficient, and open Software Defined Vehicle architecture. The Ampere team will comprise around 10 000 employees, one-third of engineers.