Renault confident on 2011 commercial vehicle sales

French auto maker Renault sees its commercial vehicle sales outperforming the market in 2011, commercial vehicle unit director Jean-Christophe Kugler told Reuters in an interview on March 30.
Commercial vehicle sales suffered a drastic fall during the crisis as businesses slashed spending and put off renewing their fleets, but Renault saw sales of commercial vehicles including the Kangoo small van and the bigger Master van rise in 2010 as the recovery got under way.
"When the economy recovers, commercial vehicle sales pick up strongly. We're tending to do better than the market," Kugler said at the signing of a letter of intent with delivery company Colizen, which agreed to buy 50 Kangoo electric vehicles (EV).
In 2011, strong emerging growth is offsetting more modest rises in Europe. "We're seeing markets get going again with around a 5 percent increase in Europe. Worldwide, there are markets growing much more strongly like Brazil, Turkey and North Africa," he said.
"In 2011 we're continuing to increase our market share," said Kugler. "We have a very well fed order book." Short-term measures to ensure the consequences of a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan did not affect Renault's production were working, Kugler said.
"We're dealing with supply problems because of Japan, but at the moment it's working," Kugler said. "We are managing to secure our production."
He added: "For the moment there is no impact. I don't say there won't be problems in future. We have a whole team, a crisis centre, which is allowing us to find solutions."
Kugler said it was too early to say how much electric van sales would account for as a proportion of total commercial vehicle sales, but that Renault could adapt its production to suit if it changes. "Logically the mix should be more significant (for commercial vehicles than passenger cars)", he said, referring to the fact that the limited range of EVs is seen as compatible with delivery vans covering short predictable routes in cities.
"But if the electricity distribution network is installed effectively and individual customers are reassured, I think people will make the switch in big numbers," he added.
Renault, with Japanese alliance partner Nissan Motor is betting heavily on electric vehicles, jointly investing 4 billion euros ($5.6 billion) in the technology and predicting 10 percent of new car sales world-wide by 2020 will be electric.