In an interview with the English car magazine Autocar, Renault brand CEO Fabrice Cambolive said the French manufacturer’s first objective is to add some “purely new models” to its existing line-up.

While the Renault boss didn’t rule out more retro-inspired models, Cambolive insisted Renault won’t fill its line-up with them, instead saying any such model “has to fit into the modern era”. “You can go retro if you have a purpose, but if you don’t have one, you will fail,” he warned.

The brand has enjoyed growing success in recent years by adding retro-themed EVs, such as the 4, 5 and Twingo, alongside a line-up of hybrid models, such as the Clio, and including a range of new SUVs.

Balanced line-up

Renault is aiming for a balanced line-up, Cambolive said: “You should be on one-third iconic cars, like R5, R4 and Twingo; one-third saga cars that are not icons but in the mind of people, like Clio and Scenic; after that you have to let your designers propose something purely new. You are dead if you just live in the past.”

“Our first objective now is to bring into the market some purely new models, because we don’t have to count on the past with R5 and Clio,” he added.

Cambolive gave no details about what those new models might be, but he doesn’t see room for additional cars in the current line-up. Nevertheless, he noted a trend towards offering global cars that are then heavily localized for each region.

Reinventing Clio

While the new Clio has only just been launched, Cambolive pointed out that, ahead of the next-generation 5, Renault is prioritizing “seeing what will come after today’s Clio”. Given the likely product cycle, the next-generation Clio is unlikely to arrive before 2030.

Cambolive added: “We feel that in Europe, we have a kind of uncovered sub-segment, which is the B-hatch-segment ‘low drive’ [non-SUV], where we need to invent the successor of Clio, and this is what we are working on now.”

“We are trying to understand the potential of the B-hatch, and at which size: a B-hatch now should be 4.1-4.2 meters. How do you cover this when you need to have not an SUV but a hatch? And which type of car should you go for: sportiness, practicality, versatility, …? This is what we are trying to anticipate with Clio for the next generation.”

Asked about the drivetrain, Cambolive wasn’t completely decisive yet: “Clio is a kind of saga car, and we have to think about the new Clio in this way, not to try to put the new Clio in the totally electrified world. It’s a little too soon to answer you. I don’t know if we will have a combustion engine at this stage.”

Notably, the next-generation platform that Renault is developing can accommodate both pure-electric and range-extender powertrains.

Cambolive explained: “What we’re saying is that in 2030 we want to be 100% electrified, out of which 50% is BEV, and now the trend is going even higher towards BEV than what we said. It means it’s a little too soon to answer, but, frankly speaking, we will be in a pure-electrified world when the next Clio arrives.”

So, Cambolive is explicitly talking about electrified cars in general, not only BEVs. Is it a sign that there will still be room for EREVs, HEVs, and eventually PHEVs in Renault’s lineup?

Next R5 as a game-changer

Cambolive confirmed Renault will renew the R5 for a second generation: “I don’t know if we will reinvent the R5 in five years or later, but we will try to come up with something which is a game-changer in terms of the appeal of the car. We are in a phase where we try to understand the recipe of R5, because it’s not obvious to say ‘it’s a success because of this, this and this’.”

Renault will shortly introduce a major update featuring more powerful motors and a bigger battery. As part of that engineering program, Cambolive admitted the team “detected some weak points on the car,” but he noted: “The good thing is we detected those weak points before people were giving us feedback on them, which shows they were able to think about the car without compromise.”

“What is important, I think, is not to try to compensate for all the weak points of the car but to come up with something with additional value. It can be another body type; it can be something based on another pleasure; it can be co-branding with somebody, like Mini is doing with Paul Smith. I don’t know yet.

No compromises

“It’s difficult to really say what the main reason for the success of R5 is, but I would say that the key factor is that we didn’t make any compromise,” Cambolive explained. “That’s because we didn’t listen to people internally and externally who told us that we should put a hybrid on the car to be successful.”

“But we didn’t do it because we didn’t try to correct the weak points. We emphasize the pleasure and the added value in the life cycle,” he concluded.

For sure, Renault has steered away from disaster again in recent years. Now is the time to plan for the future, to stay relevant and occupy a serious chunk of territory in an automotive world that is changing at an impressive speed.

One of the key factors here is that Renault, at its best, never wants to do things exactly like the others. That’s probably the best guarantee for survival in an uncertain future.