Does the looming 2030 combustion ban intimidate you – and are you suffering for having no hybrids?
“We will go electric, but we will do it at the last minute when the customers are ready and the market is ready. We’re part of the Renault Group so we have the technology on the shelf, ready to go, and the longer we wait, the more affordable it becomes for us and our customers. You’ll see it in a two-stage approach: we will begin to hybridise at the end of this year/start of next with the Jogger, and inevitably with the rest of the range following in due course.”
How will you maintain low pricing with electrified cars?
“As more people get on board with the electric vehicle trend – including the Renault Group – the cost of those materials, the engineering, the research and design will come down. The reason we’ve not launched [an EV] now is that it just wouldn’t make any sense because it wouldn’t be the price of a Dacia any more. It doesn’t work for us today. But in five, six, seven or eight years – certainly before 2030 – we will make sure that it works.”
A lot of your customers are older, more rurally based and less tied into the internet. What’s the incentive to update your processes?
“I don’t think ‘incentive’ is the right word – it’s the way the market is going. My parents are in their 50s/60s and they buy stuff from Amazon like anyone else. Our customers are used to buying things online. I know that cars are a little bit different because of the cost and the regulations involved, but if we can crack that journey – and actually age, demographic, gender and all of that don’t really matter because it’s just how people buy things these days – that’s just the way the industry is moving.”
“For Dacia specifically, I do see that as a strength, Our range is super simple, we don’t have a million optional extras like you see with some other brands. A lot of customers face the paralysis of choice: you go into a Starbucks to order a sandwich and you’re there for half an hour trying to work out what bread you want, what cheese, do you want it toasted, do you want lettuce and tomatoes…? You think ‘bloody hell, I only came in here for a ham sandwich and now I don’t know what I want or how much I spent’, whereas with us it’s a really simple line-up with three versions, two optional extras (even that, we’re looking at) so it does lend itself quite well to online retailing.”