Paris, March 2. Aramco, the state oil company of Saudi Arabia, intends to enter with a minority stake in the structure created in equal shares by the French Renault and the Chinese Geely, named Horse, to consolidate their thermal and hybrid car activities.
Aramco has signed a letter of intent to this effect, according to a joint press release published on Thursday by the three companies, which does not specify the percentage of capital that the Saudi giant would have.
Aramco’s investment would aim to support the development of next-generation synthetic fuels and hydrogen technologies, the statement said.
Aramco’s entry will give the company “a considerable advantage in the race for ultra-low-emission thermal technologies,” Renault CEO Luca de Meo said in the note.
Renault and Geely (owner of Sweden’s Volvo and Lotus) are expected to have equal shares in the new company, which will have 17 engine plants, transmission systems and R&D centers in Spain, Romania, Sweden, in China and South America, with a total workforce of 19,000 employees.
In accordance with the objectives announced last November by Renault, this structure will make it possible to manufacture five million transmissions and thermal, hybrid and rechargeable hybrid engines per year, which should generate 15,000 million euros in turnover from the start.
Important elements of Horse still remain to be defined, such as the location of the headquarters of this subsidiary in which Spain is, to begin with, the country that weighs the most.
The CEO of Renault, Luca de Meo, had recognized four months ago that there were companies in the hydrocarbon sector which were interested in this project of thermal and hybrid cars, while the name of Aramco was already resonating.
Nissan and Mitsubishi, Renault’s two partners in the alliance it is forging with these two Japanese manufacturers, have already indicated that they will not have shares in Horse, but that they will be customers of this structure to market vehicles equipped with these engines.
Horse is the result of the formal split by Renault of what is its great bet for the future: the electric vehicle grouped together in the new Ampère subsidiary, which it intends to list on the stock exchange.
The more traditional business of combustion engine and hybrid cars, technologies doomed to disappear in the long term (new cars of this type can no longer be sold in the European Union after 2035) will thus be separated into a conglomerate associated in a first time with Geely and soon with Aramco, if the operation presented today is confirmed.
The diamond group was also confident when announcing its spin-off in November that, despite the forced transition to electric vehicles in the EU, its sales of thermal or hybrid cars in the world will continue to increase at the rate 2% per year. on average over the period 2022-2030.
Horse’s main assets are the engine and transmission plants in Valladolid and Seville (Spain), Cacia (Portugal), Bursa (Turkey), Pitesti (Romania), Curitiba (Brazil), CorMecanica (Chile) and PFA (Argentina) . ).
In addition, there are several engineering and R&D centers in Spain, Romania, Turkey and Brazil. EFE
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