It takes just four and a half hours to build a 44-tonne heavyweight from two simple steel beams, on one of the two assembly lines at the Renault Trucks factory, a facility celebrating its 60th anniversary this year in Bourg-en-Bresse, in the Ain. Two thousand people work here, 20% of them women, from 7 a.m. to 3:37 p.m. This September, two of the 115 vehicles that slowly pass through the factory each day come off the assembly line incomplete. The engine and gearbox, as well as the transmission arm, will be inserted into their entrails at the end, on a third dedicated finishing line.
These road giants are not ordinary, they are the new E-Tech electric vehicles that Renault Trucks will be producing in series from November 2023. “It gives an idea of the upheaval that is taking place in factories, where combustion vehicles will increasingly have to coexist with battery-powered vehicles.explains Jean-François Risselin, communications director of the Bourg-en-Bresse site. The impact on space management and staff skills is enormous. »
The profession today has a clear idea of its destiny. “Batteries have taken the lead in the race to decarbonisation”“It’s about time,” says Régis Pierrelle, Renault Trucks’ director of electromobility operations. “The European Union’s latest target, revised upwards in June, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from trucks by 15% by 2025 for all new vehicles sold by manufacturers, compared to 2019. Then by 45% by 2030 and 90% by 2040.”
“Incredible technological disruption”
Until then, flexibility is needed at the Bress workshops of the Swedish subsidiary Volvo. At the designated finish line, the electric heavy-duty vehicles must meet a deadline of four and a half hours, so as not to penalise the production of internal combustion vehicles. A race against time. “Bringing our E-Tech into the “transition time” the usual is our main challenge »Risselin points out. Instead of adding liquid fuel tanks, electric trucks get four to six battery packs, each with 3,600 Samsung cells. Range: 300 kilometers. Between these packs is the engine, while under the cab, where the diesel engine is usually located, slides the truck’s brain, “a kind of electrical cabinet, a real concentrate of intelligence”explains Mr. Pierrelle.
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