Mihai Bordeanu, Renault Group: “We’re democratizing the electric market in Romania with Dacia Spring”

“Looking at 2022, the domestic market is increasing, unlike other markets in Europe, even though is not a high growth but it’s a good thing. Regarding production numbers, we are now closer to the pre-pandemic figures. We are producing much more than last year and the year before. Renault Group is changing, and we are building an organization ready to face new challenges. A new entity called Ampere will be created in France and will deal with electric vehicles and powertrains. Renault Group is also aiming to become world leader in producing ICE and hybrid powertrains along with Geely. There is another chapter which is going to be written quite soon, which is about synthetic fuels and there is a lot of debate around it.  There are exciting, positive news for us, and I think there is a huge silver lining in this context we are currently navigating today,” Mihai Bordeanu, Country Head Romania, Renault Group said during Romanian Automotive Forum 2022 organized by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“We’re democratizing the electric market in Romania with Dacia Spring. The electric market in Romania is now around 7 percent. If you look at the five biggest markets in Europe, the electric market share is 9 percent. The gap between Romania and those countries is not that big. The speed of developing the EV market and the charging infrastructure is different from country to country. We should be realistic about it. Looking through the technological viewpoint, we need to make sure that the customer is able to absorb this new technology and is ready to pay for it and is ready to live with it.

We are fast in adopting new technologies in Romania. Remember mobile phones, internet broadband. We are able to adopt technology but then it needs to be complete. We can’t just give a part of it and say we give you the car and now it’s your job to charge it.

We have orders now for nearly 10,000 Dacia Spring and we need to see how we speed up the development of the charging infrastructure. There is a program now that allows the local authorities to develop their own network of chargers, but this is not happening with the same speed around the country. We’ve done some steps, but there are a lot to do.”

Full recording of the conference: