According to exclusive reporting from the European Electric Car Report industry publication, Renault – confident of achieving 2020 CO2 targets "with confidence," – have now decided to open their EU CO2 emissions pool up to other manufacturers, according to the official document published by the European Commission.
Renault, topping European pure electric passenger car registrations (number one brand) in the opening 8-months of this year, according to European Electric Car Report data, have now decided to open their CO2 pool up to other manufacturers.
The French manufacturer was expected to pool with Alliance partners Mitsubishi and Nissan, as confirmed in an official statement earlier this year.
However, on the back of comments made to this report just last week, by a senior Renault official, that intention has still not been made official, and with Renault Group forecasting to meet 2020 compliance "landing with confidence," according to the same executive, have now decided to open their CO2 pool up.
This now enables Renault to offer some of that over compliance buffer to other manufacturers, enabling an additional revenue stream in a similar form to Tesla's with their CO2 pool deal with FCA, heavily contributing to the Californian manufacturer in producing positive 2020 first-half financial results.
Another recently opened pool is, as report on, Volkswagen Group inviting SAIC to join their pool, for all be it different circumstances.
A Volkswagen Group spokesperson put it to this report as, "the creation of the pool is an additional hedging measure due to the increased forecasting uncertainties caused by the Covid-19-pandemic."
This points to SAIC, through its MG brand, potentially helping Volkswagen Group over its 2020 CO2 finish line, given another threat of a Covid related lock-down putting a premature end to the sales year.
A potentially interested candidate in joining the Renault pool in 2020 may well be Daimler.
Late to the 2020 CO2 compliance game, with a sporadic launch of plug-in models in the second half of 2020, in order to lower its fleet average – falling dramatically during the past two months according to this report – the same potential lock-down scenario would, at this point, likely leave Daimler short of its target.
Daimler and Renault have strategic cooperations in place that would complement a possible pooling agreement hedging against potential regional lock-downs scenarios.
According to the August edition of the European Electric Car Report, Renault remained the brand with the highest amount of pure electric registrations across the 18 market West European region with 51,200 (11% mix of total Renault volumes) pure electric registrations.
According to the official document, applications to join the open Renault pool close November 18, and at this point are only available for 2020.
More in-depth analysis is available each month in the European Electric Car Report, available on a monthly or annual basis here