December 9, 2025 - Ford and Renault Partner on EVs/CVs

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for December 9, 2025, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

Today, Ford and Renault Group announced a new alliance to develop electric passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles. The initial goal is two new Ford-branded electric cars using the platform from Renault's Ampere unit. Ampere was established as a business unit to focus on developing and manufacturing software-defined EV platforms. The architecture is already being used across the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance for vehicles like the new Renault Twingo, Megane e-tech, and 5 e-tech, as well as the Nissan Micra. 

This is not Ford's first attempt at an EV partnership in Europe. In 2019, Ford announced a partnership with Volkswagen that would see it use the German manufacturer's MEB platform for vehicles it would build. Ford spent more than $2 billion to retool its Cologne assembly plant to produce the compact Explorer and Capri, but since finally going on sale in mid-2024, they have had only modest success with just over 61,000 sales. As a result, the Cologne plant is significantly underutilized. 

The new Ampere-based models will be designed by Ford and manufactured at the Ampere factory in Northern France as part of a new product push from Ford for the European market. However, the first of the two models is not expected to go on sale until early 2028. Given the different nature of this relationship compared to the VW partnership, it should require less direct investment by Ford while allowing Renault to increase its factory utilization, giving both companies the opportunity to benefit more from economies of scale. 

Ford and Renault also signed a letter of intent to explore potential collaboration on light commercial vehicles under the two brands. Ford had a similar arrangement with VW, with the most notable output being the second-generation VW Amorak pickup based on the Ford Ranger. 

Thanks for listening.