Renault partners Chinese firm for 2026 Twingo EV

Renault has partnered with a Chinese engineering firm to develop its sub-£17,000 Twingo city car after talks with Volkswagen about a potential collaboration proved fruitless. The two firms had been evaluating the prospect of co-developing their respective entry-level city EVs. But Volkswagen will now work independently to bring its similarly conceived ‘ID 1’ to production in 2027. Renault will instead be assisted by the unnamed Chinese manufacturing outfit, which is understood to be a supplier rather than a car maker. Related articles “I wanted to show that European industry could work together as a team, so I think this is a lost opportunity,” Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo told Reuters after the talks ended, but work on the Twingo has continued. The retro supermini is scheduled to be revealed in late 2025 and in showrooms in the first months of 2026 on current timings. The concept freeze took place at the start of this year and Renault is committed to a 24-month development cycle. De Meo has told Autocar that partnering with the unnamed Chinese firm is crucial to achieving this ambitious development timeframe and identifying efficiencies that the firm can employ to reduce costs. Asked how Renault will make the Twingo profitable, he said: “We’ll do it by radically changing our production engineering and our component sourcing. “Normally, we specify big components like HVAC systems from big tier-one suppliers. We send them a 1000-page holy book about how a Renault HVAC system should be, and they create a new one. But maybe these things are already there in our other cars. If they are, we’ll use them in future. We will be able to do a car on a cycle below 24 months.” Slashing development lead times is important because it will allow Renault to be “more agile, more virtuous and more competitive”, de Meo has said previously. But another benefit of making the development and production process more efficient is that it could drastically reduce its cars’ environmental impact.