Groupe Renault, which also includes Dacia and Lada, sold slightly more cars in the first quarter of this year than last year. The French concern mainly benefited from the rising sales of Dacia and the increased demand for delivery vans. Sales of Renault passenger cars did decline.
In total, Groupe Renault sold 665,038 cars worldwide, an increase of 1.1 percent compared to a year earlier. In addition, sales of vans increased by 29.5 percent, but sales of Renault passenger cars fell by 4.6 percent. Renault is still experiencing nuisance from the current lockdown measures on the important French home market, the group explains the setback. Dacia is doing quite well with passenger cars with an increase of 8.3 percent. According to Renault, this is mainly due to the market launch of the new Sandero and the good sales results of the Duster. The Spring, Dacia’s first EV, has already reserved 10,000 copies. Also nice, although a drop in the ocean: Alpine sales were up 15.3 percent to 423 cars.
Despite the slightly increased sales numbers, turnover decreased by 1.1 percent to € 10 billion in the past period. This was mainly due to negative exchange rate effects. Last year, Renault suffered a record loss of € 8 billion from the corona pandemic. The group is currently cutting thousands of jobs and reducing production capacity in order to ultimately achieve cost savings of € 2 billion. According to CEO Luca de Meo, that target may still be reached before the end of this year, but he recently said that there are still a few tough months ahead of the recovery.