The French automobile corporation plans to cut its electric car production costs by switching to more affordable lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePo4) power cells.
The company reckons that these cells are 20% cheaper than the lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide (NMC) cells currently installed in all Renault EVs. Both are categorized under lithium-ion batteries, but the NMC cells lend themselves best to smaller and shorter-range EVs.
Renault says that CATL (China) and LG Energy Solution (Korea) will be supplying the batteries. Since one of these companies runs a factory in Hungary and the other one in Slovakia, both should be exempt from the recent EV tariffs.