Autocar confidential: Rimac talks EVs, Renault's sustainable re-factory and more

In this week's round-up of automotive gossip, we get Mate Rimac's unfiltered take on the differences between EV hypercars, explore how Renault is refurbishing its Flins factory and more.

Rimac talks EVs 

Mate Rimac, boss of the Rimac EV technology firm, is brutally honest about how he sees electric hypercars differentiating themselves from rivals. “I don’t know; that’s going to be a tough one,” he told Autocar in a recent interview. “Maybe it will come down to little tweaks, like the differences between the Ferrari 488 and the McLaren 720S.”

Renault's factory refurb

Renault's factory in Flins, France, which is soon to cease producing cars and be converted into a sustainability-focused ‘re-factory’, will in September open an 8500sq m ‘used car factory’ capable of refurbishing 45,000 second-hand vehicles per year for resale. It’s expected to cut the turnaround time of those vehicles from an average of 21 days to just six days. A ‘retrofit’ division will also offer “conversion of combustion-engine vehicles to other, less carbon-based energies”.

Supply gains

Audi is focused on reducing the carbon footprint of its cars’ supply chains, as it seeks to become entirely carbon-neutral by 2050 in line with the wider Volkswagen Group. “If you look at a battery-powered car, up to 50% of its CO2 emissions over the life cycle of the car are incurred in the supply chain, which means we have a huge lever here,” said Marco Philippi, Audi’s head of procurement strategy. “We’ve got some 14,000 direct suppliers, and you must think these 14,000 suppliers have sub-suppliers who have other suppliers. If we shift that network in the right direction, then we won’t just do something for Audi but also, I’d say, for the industry.”