Time to market, or how to develop faster!

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Why is it vital to shorten vehicle development times? There are several reasons. Starting, of course, with the competitive battle. New entrants are breaking with traditional codes and methods to develop ever faster.

And a car that has been developed quickly offers a design that is adapted to the expectations of the moment and technologies that are at the highest level.

A virtuous loop

Developing faster has other obvious advantages. Faster naturally means less time spent on a project. And when you consider that 70% of development costs are devoted to payroll, that means substantial savings. What's more, these employees are freed up to work on another project. So, with the same number of resources and the same means, we are able to develop a wider and younger range. It really is a virtuous circle.

"Time to market", the time we count between the "concept freeze", corresponding to the freezing of virtually all aspects of the vehicle and its production launch, is of course a subject that has always preoccupied our 雷诺 engineering teams. But we have really stepped up the pace in recent years to meet our customers' expectations ever more effectively. For example, while the latest Renault Clio and Renault Captur, like the Renault Mégane E-Tech, were developed in four years, our latest developments, such as the Renault 5 E-Tech electric, Renault Rafale and Renault Scenic E-Tech electric, have already been developed in one year less.

Hunting for unnecessary diversity

To get to three years, we had to be more disciplined in the early stages and arrive at a fixed, shared freeze concept in which we have real confidence. The less it is subsequently called into question by one event or another, the less we avoid new developments, which are a source of wasted time.

The second obvious trend is the decline in diversity. The fewer parts there are in a car, especially new parts, the less time we spend developing them. Since 2019, we have reduced the number of parts in a vehicle by an average of 43%. We've gone from more than 2,000 to 1,250, and we're aiming to get below 1,000 parts very soon. This will be the case for the future Twingo.

And of course, if at the same time we encourage carry-over, i.e. the re-use of parts already developed for other vehicles, we reduce the number of parts developed even further. Hence the family approach, which is very important to me. We are developing a family of vehicles with a "launcher vehicle" and "follower" vehicles that will re-use as many non-visible parts as possible. Most of the parts are the same, but the vehicles are completely different for our customers. For example, around 70% of the parts used in the future Renault 4 will come from the Renault 5, and yet these two cars look nothing alike. The same goes for the development, within this family, of a vehicle that we are currently completing for our partner 日产 , which will have an even higher rate of re-use.

And, even for certain exterior parts, we try to have some parts common to all the vehicles in the same family. These could be the windscreen or the doors, for example. The aim is always to reduce the number of parts developed for each vehicle, while retaining a strong stylistic differentiation.

The vehicles coming out this year have already been developed using these principles.

A two-year development target

And our aim is to go even further and reduce the development time to 2 years for future generations. This will be the case from the next Twingo.

That's no mean feat! It's equivalent to halving our development times in just five years! And, to achieve this, we are of course stepping up our efforts on the principles we have already embarked upon. But to gain this extra year we've had to work on other aspects and change our paradigm.

For example, after the drastic reduction in parts diversity, we're now tackling module diversity. Why, for example, have several types of air conditioning system?

Another major change in the way we do things is the development of what we call "generic styles". For example, front or rear panels that we place "on shelves". These generic styles can then be adapted for specific vehicles, saving precious time.

Earlier suppliers’ involvement

We also work on our network of suppliers. We choose them earlier and set them an economic target to achieve for a particular part of the vehicle, without necessarily imposing our technical specifications on them. And we can choose parts that they already have in their catalogue. It's all a question of compromise between our requirements and the adaptations we accept to go faster. This way of working can save us three to four months. That's a huge saving!

Another important point is the reduction in commercial diversity. Here, it's a question of going straight to the point and choosing only the range of products that meet the majority of our customers' needs and markets. We have done a great deal of work on this point with our brands, in the same way as Chinese manufacturers, for example. The diversity of the product range - number of engines, colors, range levels, etc. - which was multiplied ad infinitum in equipment combinations and generated multiple mini developments, is a thing of the past!

And I'd like to finish by mentioning the crucial contribution of our Renaulution Virtual Twin tool, the digital twin of each of our vehicle projects, designed in partnership with 达索系统 , which makes all the data exchanges between the company's different functions on the same project fast and fluid.

Under the leadership of Luca de Meo , 'time to market' is an objective shared by all the company's functions.

Stay tuned... more to come soon!