Autocar confidential: Rimac talks EVs, Renault's sustainable re-factory and more
Our reporters empty their notebooks to round up a week in gossip from across the automotive industry
In this week's round-up of automotive gossip, we get Mate Rimac's unfiltered take on the differences between EV hypercars, explore how Renault is refurbishing its Flins factory and more.
*Rimac talks EVs *
Mate Rimac, boss of the Rimac EV technology firm, is brutally honest about how he sees electric hypercars differentiating themselves from rivals. “I don’t know; that’s going to be a tough one,” he told Autocar in a recent interview. “Maybe it will come down to little tweaks, like the differences between the Ferrari 488 and the McLaren 720S.”
*Renault's factory refurb*
Renault's factory in Flins, France, which is soon to cease producing cars and be converted into a sustainability-focused ‘re-factory’, will in September open an 8500sq m ‘used car factory’ capable of refurbishing 45,000 second-hand vehicles per year for resale. It’s expected to cut the turnaround time of those vehicles from an average of 21 days to just six days. A ‘retrofit’ division will also offer “conversion of combustion-engine vehicles to other, less carbon-based energies”.
*Supply gains*
Audi is focused on reducing the carbon footprint of its cars’ supply chains, as it seeks to become entirely carbon-neutral by 2050 in line with the wider Volkswagen Group. “If you look at a battery-powered car, up to 50% of its CO2 emissions over the life cycle of the car are incurred in the supply chain, which means we have a huge lever here,” said Marco Philippi, Audi’s head of procurement strategy. “We’ve got some 14,000 direct suppliers, and you must think these 14,000 suppliers have sub-suppliers who have other suppliers. If we shift that network in the right direction, then we won’t just do something for Audi but also, I’d say, for the industry.”
*READ MORE*
*Rimac C_Two: 1888bhp hypercar on track for 2021 deliveries *
*Mate Rimac on C_Two progress and opening a British R&D centre *
*How Croatian supercar firm Rimac is shaping the future of fast cars*