Renault Sets 200k Goal For EV Production

Renault have set a goal of producing 200,000 electric vehicles annually by 2015.

So says the French newspaper La Tribune, which quotes company insiders saying at least 150,000 of the vehicles will be the Renault Zoe, an electric vehicle (shown above in concept form) slated for production by mid-2012. The French automaker says electric vehicles will account for far more of its overall sales than the 5 percent estimated for the industry in 2015, the paper reports.

Ghosn also is CEO of Nissan, Renault’s corporate partner by marriage, which is introducing the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle later this year. Nissan plans to build as many as 50,000 Leafs (Yes, the company says the plural is Leafs. We’ve asked.) next year. The first cars will be built in Japan, but Nissan plans to launch factories in Tennessee and England by 2013; the factory in Tennessee will build as many as 150,000 Leafs annually.

Peugeot built 2.4 million vehicles in 2008 and Nissan built almost 3.4 million, according to the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (.pdf), so clearly we’re still talking about a small percentage of the two companies’ output. But Ghosn believes EVs will account for 10 percent of global auto sales by 2020, even if others have put the figure at half that.

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