► Saving the small car – mission impossible?
► Stellantis and Group Renault call for regulation rethink
► Dacia boss Denis Le Vot weighs in on what’s next
Lighter. Cheaper. Simpler. More efficient. That’s the kind of cars what Europeans want and need, according to both Group Renault and Stellantis. In case you missed it, the heads of two European car making giants – Luca De Meo and John Elkann – got together at the Financial Times’ Future of the Car summit to launch a continent-sized red flag about the state of the industry.
The sitrep isn’t good: cars, regardless of powertrain, have gotten too bloated and heavy – either to meet safety requirements or because of battery-electric architecture packaging constraints. Increasingly punitive tailpipe emissions targets mean small cars have been made extremely difficult to produce and/or unprofitable, pushing car makers to build larger SUVs many consumers don’t actually need. Both De Meo (pictured below) and Elkann have rallied against incoming combustion engine bans, too, and posit the need for a new approach to emissions controls that considers the whole life cycle of the car – not just what comes out the back.
Denis Le Vot, head of Dacia, is feeling rather smug then. Given the brand champions such attributes in its cars no matter the size, this new approach is right up his street. ‘This is the moment,’ he smiles when talking to CAR the very evening after the summit was held. ‘Regulations have been pushing us to a point to where affordable mobility doesn’t exist anymore. We are having to press all of the buttons at the same time; ‘I want my CO2 down. I want my security. I want my GSR2. I want my EuroNCAP stars. I want my recyclability.’ Put all these together and it becomes impossible to get this all down to a decent price, particularly for a four-metre-or-less car. I think it’s very fair and intelligent to ask if we went too far.’
Dacia arguably does better than most to reduce costs and keep things essential – one of the brand’s key tenets. Some may disagree with the brand’s strategy of ‘not chasing EuroNCAP stars’, according to Le Vot, but it’s one element of what keeps the brand’s cars cheaper than everything else in their respective segments.
And Le Vot also agrees with De Meo and Elkann: ‘CAFE requirements mostly concentrate on the exhaust pipe and the CO2 emission at that moment. But the life cycle assessment can give very different results; Look at an electric car in Poland with 100 per cent coal-originated electricity compared with something like a Bigster Hybrid somewhere else, for example.’
So, what happens now? For Group Renault and Stellantis, it’s still about selling cars – obviously – with De Meo framing it as a way to get dirty, unsafe older cars off the road in favour of cleaner, if not always zero-emission, ones. That said, Renault is already devising strategies to reduce the cost of small EVs, resulting in the upcoming new Twingo and the Dacia spin-off that will result.
‘A big step is to not have the punishment, but the necessity to do a better job and win competitiveness by investing in more than one technology,’ De Meo says at the Future of the Car summit. ‘The principle of technological neutrality has underpinned every regulation since forever – except for cars.’
Does this mean that the Renault Group and Stellantis are spearheading a small car revolution? The seed has already been planted, according to Le Vot. ‘We’re very happy that the European Commission, when they put the first set of legislations to us, said ‘let’s meet again to discuss the target,’’ he says, pointing out that De Meo’s suggestion of a lifecycle overview is on the table.
Jake has been an automotive journalist since 2015, joining CAR as Staff Writer in 2017. With a decade of car news and reviews writing under his belt, he became CAR's Deputy News Editor in 2020 and then News Editor in 2025. Jake's day-to-day role includes co-ordinating CAR's news content across its print, digital and social media channels. When he's not out interviewing an executive, driving a new car for review or on a photoshoot for a CAR feature, he's usually found geeking out on the latest video game, buying yet another pair of wildly-coloured trainers or figuring out where he can put another car-shaped Lego set in his already-full house.
By Jake Groves
CAR's news editor; gamer, trainer freak and serial Lego-ist