Latest news with #LeVot
Time of India
09-07-2025
- Automotive
- Time of India
Renault to appoint interim CEO next week as search for Luca de Meo's successor narrows
Renault is expected to name an interim CEO next week as the French carmaker finalises its search for a permanent successor to outgoing chief Luca de Meo, who is set to join luxury fashion conglomerate Kering as CEO, Financial Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. De Meo's departure is effective July 15, adding urgency to Renault's decision-making process. The company is reportedly evaluating a shortlist that includes three key contenders: internal candidates Denis Le Vot and François Provost, and former Stellantis executive Maxime Picat. The legacy to choose from Le Vot currently leads Renault's low-cost Dacia brand and is credited with driving significant gains in the value-focused segment. Provost, as per his LinkedIn profile, serves as Renault's Chief Procurement, Partnerships and Public Affairs Officer and has been a long-time member of the Group's leadership. Picat, who recently left Stellantis, brings extensive international experience and operational know-how, making him a strong contender for the top job. Renault has yet to issue an official statement in response to the developments. Industry analysts have suggested that Le Vot and Picat are front-runners, especially given the need to maintain Renault's momentum in its ongoing restructuring and electrification plans. Under de Meo's leadership, Renault launched its 'Renaulution' strategy to focus on profitability, electrification, and brand revitalisation. The upcoming appointment will be critical as Renault navigates a highly competitive automotive landscape shaped by rapid EV transformation, supply chain complexities, and ongoing alliance dynamics with Nissan and Mitsubishi. A formal announcement is expected before or on July 15, in time for de Meo's official exit.>
Auto Car
18-06-2025
- Automotive
- Auto Car
Dacia's secrets to success: how it makes its cars so cheap
Adapting it for Duster duties cost a little more, mainly for the reinforced sills and ride height, but from there, for the extra-large Bigster, the only major change has been to extend the A-pillars by 50mm. Every kilogram is managed, too. The reason the Bigster doesn't offer a seven-seat interior is because Dacia worked out only 25% of buyers in the segment consider them but the added weight would require strengthening for the rear axle, which would add expense across the range. Ergo the Bigster is a five-seater only, being ruthlessly focused on the main audience. Which brings Le Vot to his second point: the importance of learning what the intended buyer really wants and then not straying beyond that kit level by so much as an additional USB-C port. 'We've been studying the Germans, I must confess,' he says, smirking. The Germans are the big market for cars like the Bigster. They're also fussy, which is crucial. If our German chums 'need' something in their C-SUV, you damn well better offer it. And if they don't, nobody else will want it and you're off the procurement hook. 'If the car doesn't have AC [air-con], then it's disqualified. But if I offer, whatever, electric seats for the front passenger or AC in the seats? No need: it's not disqualifying. So we have dual-zone AC [in the Bigster], which we've never had before, and we have two-tone paint and an electric tailgate. These are the things we will offer, and if we don't, they will say 'I'm not buying'. Hundreds of people. It's complicated; new territory for us.' The final part of the equation is the supplier negotiations, where Le Vot's sojourns in hard-nosed Russia has fortified his resolve. By all accounts, this charismatic Frenchman and his accomplices in accounts are utter bastards. Le Vot says: 'We define the car [at] €25k and the hybrid [at] €30k, then we split this price. It seems obvious, but most manufacturers don't do that. "They design the car they want to have, then give the parts to suppliers, negotiating like hell to get the best price, but the best price is a surprise. When you expect €100, you get €110 more often than €95.
Time of India
17-06-2025
- Automotive
- Time of India
Renault's CEO search may include insider Le Vot, Stellantis' Picat, analysts say
Luca de Meo's abrupt departure as Renault CEO has kicked off a search for his successor, with analysts mentioning longtime insider Denis Le Vot and Maxime Picat of rival Stellantis as suitable fits to continue the French automaker's turnaround. Renault shares fell as much as 8% on Monday, their biggest one-day percentage drop since February 2022, as investors worried about the company's future without de Meo at the helm. Shares in Kering, where he will become CEO, rallied. Picat, who is head of global purchasing and supply chains at Stellantis, had been in the running for the chief executive officer post at the world's No. 4 automaker. One of two internal candidates, he lost out to Antonio Filosa. Executive vice president Le Vot joined Renault from university and has run its low-cost Dacia brand since May 2022. Analysts at French brokerage Kepler Cheuvreux said both men could be potential successors, whilst JP Morgan analyst Jose Asumendi noted Renault's "strong bench" of brand managers, including at Dacia. "We (...) also would envision potential external candidates from (other companies) such as Stellantis, VW Group, Nissan, amongst other competitors," he said. Le Vot and Picat, who are both French nationals, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Renault declined to comment on its succession plans. Whoever succeeds de Meo will have to hit the ground running. Although he revived Renault and overhauled its strategic alliance with Nissan during his five years as CEO, like other traditional automakers it faces rising competition from Chinese rivals. The company must also lean on partnerships because it is smaller than most other mainstream manufacturers. De Meo's departure will add to concerns about Renault's ability to remain independent, said Jefferies analysts, a perennial challenge in an industry built on scale. Renault was the world's No. 15 automaker by sales in 2024, according to data compiled by industry analyst Felipe Munoz, down from 14th spot in 2023. In recent years, it has been overtaken by Chinese automakers BYD, Geely, Chery and Changan is likely to surpass it in sales this year. To make up for its small size as the auto industry wrestles with the huge expense of going electric, Renault under de Meo teamed up with a number of partners and investors including Google, Qualcomm and China's Geely. The partnerships have helped reduce costs, but labour unions claim they threaten the company's in-house know-how. INSIDER VS OUTSIDER Under Le Vot's leadership, the Dacia brand has performed well thanks to its Sandero and Duster models. In April, the subcompact Sandero was Europe's No. 2 selling car - behind the Renault Clio - and the Duster SUV was No. 7, according to research firm JATO Dynamics. Le Vot had previous management stints in Turkey and Russia, where he was chief operating officer from 2011 to 2013, and ran North American operations at alliance partner Nissan, where he oversaw the launch of the new Altima sedan in 2018. Picat has spent his entire career at PSA and then Stellantis, formed when the French group merged with FCA in 2021. He was head of the Peugeot brand from 2012, where he oversaw the launch of two of its bestsellers, the 2008 and 3008 SUVs. A Stellantis source who knows Picat said he didn't know if he was interested in the top job at Renault, but that he would "not be surprised" if he was talking to the French automaker. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly, said it would be normal for an executive to look elsewhere after losing the race to become CEO.
Irish Times
23-04-2025
- Automotive
- Irish Times
Dacia's boss wants to move upmarket, but without a big shift in prices
'Let me put it to you this way – everyone knows what the Duster is. It's a perfectly defined car; it costs around €20,000, it's very sturdy, maybe a bit rough and tough. What we're not trying to do here is to offer another, bigger Duster. What we are exactly doing is putting a new car in the middle of the table, in front of the C-segment buyers. That's three million people.' Denis Le Vot is one of the most straight-talking corporate executives you will meet. Born in Landivisiau in Brittany, he has been in charge of the Dacia brand since 2020. He has masterminded its massive recent successes, which have seen the compact Sandero hatchback unseat the mighty Tesla Model Y as Europe's best-selling car last year. He's someone who won't equivocate about a question – he'll either give you the answer or just flat-out tell you he's not going to do so. Such honesty and openness are often too rare in this world. While Le Vot has scored notable success with Dacia, he's now taking on a big challenge – trying to take a brand known for its bargain-basement pricing and offering it to the most middle-class buyers of all, those purchasing so-called C-segment SUVs in Europe. That segment accounts for 23 per cent of the total new car market in Europe and includes some of the best-selling cars around, such as the Nissan Qashqai, Hyundai Tucson, Kia Sportage, VW Tiguan, and Toyota RAV4. How can Le Vot tempt those buyers out of their familiar brands and into a supposedly cheap-and-cheerful Bigster? READ MORE You can read our take on the Bigster's individual qualities elsewhere , but Le Vot's not planning on letting the car simply speak for itself. He wants to pull hard on the purse strings of mittel-Europa's car buyers. The Bigster is Dacia's biggest model yet and a crucial climb upwards into more profitable territory 'We've been talking to buyers in Germany, which is the biggest market for C-segment models' Le Vot told The Irish Times. 'And we've been asking them: 'If I take this out, or that out, does it disqualify me?' And that's the reason that we're now offering an electric tailgate and two-zone air conditioning for the Bigster, because they said: 'If you don't do that, I'm not buying the car.'' Le Vot is counting on more than mere extra equipment in the new model to draw buyers in. He's also counting on a certain amount of shock value. 'So, three million customers are going to replace their C-segment SUVs in 2025,' said Le Vot. 'Now, the average transaction price across the whole segment in 2019 was €29,000. In 2024, it was €38,000. And so we're looking for those among the three million who were used to paying around €30,000 for their car and now they're being asked to pay around €38,000, and they're saying: 'Well, I don't have that kind of money.' [ Ford's new electric Puma is on the prowl in a very crowded market Opens in new window ] 'So what we, at Dacia, need to say is that across the other side of the street is one of our dealers, and he's proposing to you that you can have a car for the price you used to pay, but it still has all of the stuff you're used to.' Dacia is part of the Renault Group , and Renault itself has seen the sharp edge of this equation. Last year, Dacia outsold Renault, certainly in Ireland and definitely in other European markets, and Renault's own C-segment SUV offerings have all increased in price too. So at what point does Dacia start to bite the corporate hand that feeds it? Dacia chief executive Denis Le Vot: 'When we talk to our customers, value for money is the number one thing for them, and then it's style.' Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images Not yet, says Le Vot. 'Let's say that the three million people buying C-segment cars is represented in this room here,' he said. 'So, the part of the segment that is Renault is maybe these three chairs over here. So, preventing ourselves from having such a fantastic offer in the C-segment and making lots of happy clients? It's not a great thing to do, and let's be clear, with Luca [Luca De Meo, Renault Group chief executive] there's no glass ceiling for Dacia.' Le Vot went on to say that Dacia has already taken 10,000 orders for the new Bigster, even before it hits dealerships, and that gives the company an insight into what cars those buyers are trading out of. According to his figures, 84 per cent of those buyers are so-called 'conquest sales', which means that the buyers have not previously owned either a Dacia or a Renault model. Of the remaining 16 per cent, 10 per cent is made up of existing Dacia owners looking to trade up to a larger car, and the remaining 4 per cent are trading in Renault models. 'So in answer to your question, it's only 6 per cent of our total sales volume, and that's still going towards creating value for the group as a whole.' Le Vot claims that 85 per cent of Dacia buyers go on to either buy a new Dacia again or move to another vehicle from within the Renault Group. Such customer loyalty is hard to come by. One area where Dacia lags behind the mainstream competition is in its safety rating. The brand has often resisted fitting the sort of high-end electronic safety gizmos needed to score a maximum five-star rating from the independent crash test experts at Euro NCAP, and Le Vot says that this won't be changing just because the company is now chasing more demanding customers. [ Renault's Symbioz is a symbol of the total SUV takeover Opens in new window ] 'We are not chasing star scores, let me be super-clear about that,' said Le Vot. 'We care very much about passive safety, but on the active – on the electronics – we're not chasing that. When we spoke to those potential customers in Germany, this was okay with them. 'The truth is that Dacia is about making choices, for instance, about lane-keeping assistance. Many of us just turn this function off, and so if it's something that lots of people just don't use, then we won't sell it. 'When we talk to our customers, value for money is the number one thing for them, and then it's style. But the third is 'essentiality'. They don't want a car which doesn't have buttons, which has 55 screens and connected surfaces, and a massaging seat that also cuts your hair.'
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Dacia to reveal next stage of reinvention plan in November
Bigster follows the design language introduced with Duster and Sandero The second phase of Dacia's strategy road map will be revealed in November, four years after the company revitalised its brand identity, according to CEO Denis Le Vot. Le Vot describes the new Bigster SUV as the car that 'closes the first chapter' of Dacia's modern reinvention. That chapter began in 2021 with the third-generation Sandero – the first recipient of Dacia's new design language – and in time the Jogger seven-seater and the latest Duster were spun off the same platform. Dacia will elaborate on this new phase after the summer, when 'there will be a lot about electricity' as part of parent Renault Group's new Futurama company strategy. Within the next two years, Dacia's line-up will be bolstered by a pair of C-segment models and an €18,000 (£15,000) Renault Twingo-twinned city car as part of a significant broadening of the Romanian marque's portfolio. Development of that electric city car is already well under way and should arrive in the middle of next year, given its rapid, 16-month (69-week) gestation process. Dacia is targeting a 100-week development window for all new cars. Asked whether Dacia might end up cannibalising Renault's sales in the C-SUV segment, Le Vot said he was confident that, given the three million such cars sold in Europe every year, there was plenty of space for both brands. ]]>
