Renault SA plans to reintegrate its Ampere electric vehicle and software operations back into the parent company, reversing a strategy that never delivered the €10 billion valuation former CEO Luca de Meo once promised investors. The French automaker is meeting with labor unions today to discuss the reorganization.

Bloomberg informa that CEO François Provost is dismantling the standalone EV unit less than six months into his tenure, citing lower-than-expected EV demand and the need to simplify Renault’s corporate structure.

The reversal: Ampere, launched in late 2023 as Europe’s first dedicated EV and software “pure player,” will cease to exist as a separate entity.
The timeline: Renault aims to complete the reorganization by July 1, 2026, when Provost will present his new strategic plan.
The plants: Ampere’s northern France facilities producing the Renault 5 and Scenic will fold back into the parent company.
The exodus: Several Ampere executives have already departed, including CFO Vincent Piquet, who became CFO of French cable maker Nexans SA.

The IPO that never happened set the stage for this collapse

De Meo announced Ampere in 2022 with plans for an IPO in the first half of 2024, targeting a valuation of up to €10 billion ($11.7 billion). The listing would have given Ampere visibility separate from Renault’s combustion engine business and attracted outside investment from partners like Nissan, Mitsubishi, and chipmaker Qualcomm.

In January 2024, Renault cancelled the IPO entirely. The official explanation cited “unsuitable market conditions,” but the real problem was simpler: investors weren’t willing to pay what Renault wanted. EV demand in Europe had weakened, and Chinese competitors were eating into the market that Ampere was supposed to dominate.

“By setting up a 100% focused EV and software business, we built in record time an agile and competitive entity,” de Meo said at the time of the IPO cancellation. “Today, we took a pragmatic decision.”

That pragmatic decision has now led to Ampere’s dissolution entirely. Without the IPO, there was no longer a structural reason to maintain Ampere as a separate company with its own leadership, engineering teams, and support functions.

Provost is systematically unwinding de Meo’s legacy

The Ampere reintegration is the second major de Meo initiative that Provost has reversed in less than two months. In December 2025, Renault announced it would shut down the car-sharing services of its Mobilize subsidiary, another de Meo project, with those activities also being absorbed back into the parent company.

De Meo departed Renault in mid-2025 to become CEO of luxury group Kering, leaving Provost to deal with the aftermath of an EV strategy that looked brilliant on paper but collided with market reality. Ampere had set ambitious targets: €10 billion in revenue by 2025, break-even by 2025, and €25 billion in revenue by 2031 with 10% operating margins.

None of those targets appear achievable in the current environment.

The reorganization will transform Ampere from a standalone business into an engineering center focused on software and EV development within Renault Group. This preserves the technical capabilities while eliminating the administrative overhead of maintaining a separate corporate structure.

European automakers are retreating from aggressive EV commitments across the board

Renault is not alone in walking back EV ambitions. The Bloomberg report notes that Stellantis has shifted away from an all-electric push and is bringing more hybrid models to market. Volkswagen y Porsche have adjusted their strategies as battery technology demand remains uneven and Chinese manufacturers expand in Europe with low-cost offerings.

We’ve documented this retreat extensively at EVXL. In July 2025, Stellantis launched a $20,000 hybrid Fiat 500 to revive its struggling Italian manufacturing after a 46% drop in car production. In October 2025, Volkswagen posted a €1.3 billion quarterly loss driven largely by Porsche’s failed EV strategy and €4.7 billion in related charges.

The pattern extends beyond individual company struggles. An EY report from December 2025 found that half of global car buyers now plan to purchase a combustion engine vehicle within 24 months, a 13-percentage-point surge that signals a reversal from the EV momentum of recent years.

European automakers are now lobbying Brussels to water down the 2035 combustion engine ban, arguing that immovable targets no longer make sense when actual market demand isn’t materializing.

Renault is hedging its bets with partnerships and diversification

While killing Ampere as a standalone unit, Renault is not abandoning EVs entirely. The company is accelerating expansion outside Europe and has established a research and development hub in Shanghai that worked on the new Twingo EV.

The Shanghai move reflects a broader industry trend: European automakers increasingly depend on Chinese partners and facilities to remain competitive in EV development. Volkswagen has partnered with Xpeng in China, essentially admitting it cannot design competitive EVs on its own in that market.

Renault is also diversifying beyond passenger vehicles. Bloomberg notes the company is “widening its focus to help produce drones for the French army.” We first reported on this development back in June 2025, when the French defense ministry approached Renault about drone manufacturing for Ukraine’s defense. The automaker’s expertise in battery technology and lightweight materials could translate to military applications.

On the partnership front, Ford announced in December 2025 that Renault will manufacture two small EVs designed by Ford at its northern France facility, with dealership arrivals expected in 2028. The deal keeps Renault’s EV production lines running while Ford gains access to platforms it couldn’t develop competitively on its own.

The VW partnership that never materialized foreshadowed this moment

De Meo had envisioned greater cooperation among European carmakers to compete against Chinese rivals, similar to how Airbus consolidated European aerospace. In 2024, Renault and Volkswagen were in talks to jointly develop an affordable electric Twingo, hoping a partnership would reduce costs.

Those talks collapsed after several months of negotiations. VW decided to pursue its own affordable EV development, and Renault continued alone. The failure highlighted the difficulty of getting European automakers to collaborate meaningfully even when the competitive threat from China was obvious to everyone.

Renault went ahead with its Twingo EV plans independently, eventually setting up the Shanghai R&D hub to work on the project. But the broader vision of a coordinated European EV response never materialized.

EVXL’s Take

De Meo’s Ampere strategy made sense in 2022 when EV demand appeared to be on a one-way trajectory upward and European governments were showering the industry with subsidies. Creating a dedicated EV unit could attract specialized talent, command a premium valuation, and signal commitment to electrification.

But the market turned. Subsidies dried up. Chinese competitors proved faster and cheaper. European consumers balked at EV prices that remained 25% or more above comparable combustion vehicles. The structural advantages Ampere was supposed to provide became structural liabilities when the environment changed.

Provost is making the correct call here. Maintaining a separate corporate entity without an IPO or outside investment serves no purpose beyond organizational vanity. Reintegrating Ampere eliminates duplicate functions, speeds decision-making, and lets Renault respond more nimbly to market conditions.

The bigger question is whether any European automaker has a viable path to competing with BYD, which sold 2.5 million hybrids in 2024 and enjoys 30% cost advantages from local battery production. Renault can simplify its org chart all it wants, but that doesn’t close the competitive gap.

Expect more European EV retreats in the coming months. The industry spent years pretending that ambitious targets and separate business units could substitute for actual cost competitiveness. That illusion is collapsing company by company.

Editorial Note: This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI to ensure technical accuracy and archive retrieval. All insights, industry analysis, and perspectives were provided exclusively by Haye Kesteloo and our other EVXL authors, editors, and YouTube partners to ensure the “Human-First” perspective our readers expect.