Renault ends plan to import Chinese EVs for taxis, ride-hailing

GENEVA – Mobilize, Renault Group’s mobility services division, has ceased importing Chinese sedans aimed at taxi and ride-hailing drivers after concluding that customers "weren’t ready" for full-service operations.

Mobilize announced in 2021 it would bring the electric Limo sedan from China, a midsize car based on the EZoom Yi made by Jingliang Motors. The vehicle debuted the vehicle a year later in Madrid with ride-hailing specialist Cabify. It was to be launched in Paris at a later date.

Mobiilize has decided to pull the Limo after uptake proved to be slow. "Fleets were not ready to accept the full-service offer for those vehicles, even though the car was appreciated," Mobilize CEO Gianluca de Ficchy told Automotive News Europe in an interview at the Geneva auto show this week.

Mobilize offered the car to Cabify drivers on a monthly subscription that included insurance, warranty and servicing through the duration of the contract.

Mobilize had also planned to offer the coming Duo urban electric two-seat minicar and related Bento urban van on the same full-service lease. The Duo is classified as a quadricycle by the EU.

Mobilize said in an emailed statement that both vehicles will be offered to in-house car-sharing programs Mobilize Share and Zity by Mobilize. “Each company will make its own decisions based on its financial evaluation and business objectives,” the statement said. 

Both Duo and Bento will also be offered to other mobility operators as well as private buyers. The company said it was  “too early” to make public the timing and markets where the vehicles will be offered.

The cancellation of the Limo program comes after Mobilize announced in January that it had pulled Zity car-sharing operations from Paris following its introduction in 2021, reducing the service to just three cities, including Madrid.

Zity was halted in Paris because of the high rate of vandalism suffered by its cars, de Ficchy told Automotive News Europe. “We saw Paris was not the right city, but Madrid is the perfect city. No vandalism,” he said.

Zity was formed as a partnership with Spain’s Ferrovial rail company starting in Madrid and operates a fleet of 1,440 electric cars, including 1,200 Dacia Spring minicars. At the end of December, Ferrovial sold its 50 percent stake to the Renault Group, without giving a reason.

Zity, Mobilize Share, Bipi subscriptions and other services such as EV charging and energy storage are part of Mobilize Beyond Automotive, an arm of the Mobilize division that is seeking to find revenue streams apart from the leasing and banking that forms the core of its current business. 

The Renault-owned captive banking division, formerly RCI Bank, was renamed Mobilize Financial Services in 2022.

Renault Group has set a target that Mobilize Beyond Automotive will be at break-even by 2025 and making double-digit profit margins by 2027.

Mobilize has similar ambitions as mobility arms such Toyota’s Kinto and Stellantis’s Free2Move. Automakers, however, have found it difficult to expand beyond traditional selling and financing of their cars. In 2022 BMW and Mercedes-Benz announced the sale of their ShareNow car sharing business to Stellantis after a decade of attempts by both companies to make short-term rentals -- popularly known as car sharing – a sustainable business.

"You need to try. You need to fail. You need to restart if you do not move. Certainly you need to evolve," de Ficchy said. 

Mobilize’s newest focus is on selling energy to electric car customers with the promise they can cut their electricity bill by up to half by feeding energy back to the grid at peak times. The plan is facilitated by the bi-directional charging offered on the new Renault 5 and subsequent Renault Group EVs. 

Renault has set a goal of increasing Mobilize’s share of group revenue to 20 percent by 2030, up from about 6 percent now. 

The banking division last year recorded after-tax profits of 787 million euros, up 13 percent from 2022. The company financed 1.27 million contracts for Renault, Dacia and Nissan customers in 2023, a 6.6 percent increase.

Mobilize is pushing further into leasing, a key lever in the EV market, with most buyers opting to lease rather than buy outright. In January the division bought the Germany leasing specialist MeinAuto Group which has a fleet of 50,000 vehicles. Last year Mobilize acquired of 37 percent of the British operator Select Car Leasing, with Select acquiring a reciprocal 15 percent stake in Mobilize Lease&Co U.K., a subsidiary of RCI Bank U.K.