At the Retromobile show, Renault is presenting its partnership with R-Fit, a French SME which will offer electric conversion kits for 4L, R5 and Twingo.
Whether the R5 And the 4L will soon be reborn in a modern form, and therefore electric, the Twingo, already converted from its third and current generation, will have no successor.
But Renault does not intend to leave aside one of the most famous faces of its modern history, with the first generation of its city car, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year at the Rétromobile show.
The Twingo I will soon be “retrofittable”
On its stand, the diamond brand is presenting an exuberant Twingo, with lowered suspensions, leather and cashmere interior with red crystal padding, velvet hood, very bling-bling golden rims and logos, which pays homage to Californian “lowriders”.
A way above all to announce on this format for the less original the future retrofit kit which will be proposed on this model at the end of the year. Clearly, the possibility of converting a first-generation thermal Twingo to electric.
Before the Twingo, it was the 4L that inaugurated this partnership with R-Fit, a French SME specializing in retrofitting. And next September, it will be the turn of the R5 to be able to switch to zero emission mode.
From “2CV Méhari Club Cassis” to “R-Fit”
Behind this R-Fit company is a name well known to those who follow retrofit news: the 2CV Méhari Club Cassis.
“We are the first French company to have homologated a conversion kit for retrofitting: we homologated the 2CV 6, the 2CV Fourgonnette and there we managed to homologate the 4L, before the R5 and the Twingo”, summarizes Stéphane Wimez, at the head of the company.
It was the partnership with Renault that prompted the club’s retrofit activity to be brought together under this new name of “R-Fit”: a name change more in line with the company’s multi-brand positioning, which remains alongside specialized in the sale of spare parts for vintage cars, its main activity.
After calling on the company of Stéphane Wimez to retrofit the R5 for Renault as part of its partnership with the Roland Garros tennis tournament, it was only natural that the possibility of being able to convert other models of the diamond brand also came to the table:
“Our project is to convert iconic vintage vehicles to electric,” summarizes Stéphane Wimez.
“We started with Citroën because it is our brand of heart and that we were relevant to offer this conversion, he continues. But very quickly, the 4L imposed itself as obvious, with 8 million copies produced. , and in addition it was the sworn enemy of the 2CV so the bridge was quite nice to establish with our first model.
For 11,900 euros, the company can thus convert the 4L. A price which may seem high but which includes the removal of the elements specific to the internal combustion engine (engine, ignition, exhaust, etc.) and the installation of the kit (mainly electric motor, battery and charger) which retains an original mechanical transmission 4 reports. All with a 2-year warranty on installed parts and 3 years for batteries. The 78 km of electric range can be scary, but “these are vehicles that drive little in general and with a slow charge at home which is well suited to relatively limited use of the vehicle”, nuance Stéphane Wimez.
R-Fit has also just concluded a partnership with the company Design 1880 to retrofit old Fiat 500s, with an offer that starts at 18,000 euros.
A sector in full development
Although the creation of the legal framework authorizing retrofitting dates back to 2020, few projects have so far come to fruition. Stéphane Wimez recalls that it is normal for such an industrial project to take time to complete, especially in a difficult context, with the covid pandemic, the related shortages, or even the war in Ukraine.
“There is not really a technical problem: in France, companies specializing in retrofitting have rolling mules, specifies Stéphane Wimez. It is not so much the cost of homologation either: they manage to raise funds to do so. Above all, when you have an approved kit, you need to industrialize its production and have a network of installers.”
To “go from ‘craft +’ to industry”, this partnership with Renault is therefore proving decisive for developing the sector, for example by making it easier to obtain the components necessary to assemble conversion kits and at a better price. .
In the end, it is the current difficulty in producing these kits in large numbers that is hampering the development of the network.
“We have between 300 and 400 requests from garages to become an approved installer, because all maintenance/repair specialists are seeing a drop in activity with electrics and are therefore looking for additional activity. But, we, like we do not produce enough, we slow down a little on this formation of the network, by concentrating on this acceleration of the production of kits.
Stéphane Wimez mentions in particular the birth of a real production chain for battery cells in Europe to be able to obtain supplies more easily on this essential component for retrofitting and for electric cars in general.
Renault also has strong ambitions in this field of retrofitting, having entered into a recent partnership with another French company, Tolv, to convert vans, leaving them at its site in Flins (Yvelines) in full transformation into a “Re-Factory “.
