Legend has it that in 2004 Sergio Marchionne, who had been working for Fiat for a few days, was struck by the energy of that young manager, capable of hiring Gabriele Muccino for an advert on Lancia at the moment of the group's most acute crisis when in Turin the focus was on gaining the goodwill of the government rather than selling Automobiles. And so superSergio let himself be convinced by Luca de Meo, young talent coming from Renault, to bet the not much money on the new 500, starting with a pyrotechnic evening on the banks of the Po, just to demonstrate that the spirit of Mirafiori was still alive. It was a great success, on which what remains of the spirit of the house that emigrated to Stellantis still survives.
De Meo's latest bet: Ampere, the car factory of the future
Twenty years or so later, Luca De Meo, now 56 years old, returns to take a gamble, this time even more ambitious: Ampere, the electric branch of the Renault group, as of yesterday, a company completely independent from the Régie (including the subsidiary Dacia) which will continue to produce and sell combustion engines. A real revolution rather than a simple reorganization.
De Meo wanted it build the car factory of the future from scratch, which will be conceived and produced on European soil. A different factory, which occupies 11 thousand employees, for a third engineers (partly still to be recruited, not only among the 105 thousand workers of the Régie). De Meo illustrated many new features to financial analysts yesterday.
ElectroCity employees will work in three factories: Douai, Maubeuge and Ruitz in close connection with the R&D centers of Valeo, the computer scientists of Sophie Antipolis, (ex Intel) and the Tecnocentro center of Gouvaincourt.co. with a specific goal. Thinking and producing new generation cars, thanks also to an innovative union agreement: in Ampere we will work six days a week with flexible hours and two "obsessions": reducing the time to get a new model on the road to the bone and lowering costs to the level of the least expensive Citroen, the C1 produced in Slovakia.
De Meo: from No to Marchionne to a company born from scratch
An unlikely challenge. But analysts have learned not to underestimate De Meo, the child prodigy who was able to say no to maestro Marchionne and then grow in the Volkswagen group (studying German in the evening, adding another language to French, Italian, English, Spanish and Portuguese) until facing the most difficult test: the relaunch of Seat, won thanks to the birth of the Cupra brand). Now De Meo puts his face to another undertaking, until now carefully avoided by the lords of the traditional four wheels: competing without a net with a business born from scratch, like Tesla, or the new emerging Chinese, from Byd to Nio. With the aim of demonstrating that the old Europe still has a future.
“Luca di Meo's program is clear – he writes Le Monde – He wants that Ampere teams only think about electric and are able to move with the same speed as Tesla or the Chinese BYD". This is why Ampere has partnered with Qualcomm, which produces integrated circuits, and a Google in addition to the two old partners of Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi.
The goal is to skip a generation by building a car as if it were a smartphone, starting from a centralized software.
Ampere's goals
In this way Ampere aims for more than ambitious objectives: per 2031 the aim is to launch seven cars, sell 1 million vehicles and achieve a turnover of 25 billion euros.
But the first fruits will be seen next year. One will be revealed in the first quarter of 2024 new electric Renault 5, with an autonomy of up to 400 km. Then it will be the turn of the R4 but, above all, of Legend a vehicle with reduced consumption (10 kWh/100 km), 75% less CO₂ emissions than the average of European combustion vehicles sold in 2023, zero CO2 emissions at the exhaust and lower consumption of raw materials thanks to its compact dimensions. Made in Europe, Legend will be offered at an entry price of less than 20 thousand euros (excluding incentives), i.e. less than 100 euros per month for customers.
Vast programmes, to quote De Gaulle. But first we need to deal with a market that does not hide doubts about the future of the electric car which is marking time, especially in European markets. It is no coincidence that analysts believe that the objective of aIPO with a valuation of 10 billion is unthinkable today. At most, we can hope for a valuation in the spring of between 6 and 7 billion euros but there are those, like UBS, who maintain that it will not be possible to go beyond 3-4 billion. De Meo, thanks to the unconditional support of Industry Minister Bruno Le Maire, enthusiastic about the Régie's accounts being better than Volkswagen, has the burden of proving the pessimists wrong once again. And to open the season of low cost electricity, so important for the European economy.
