Valeo has announced that it will start production of a reconditioned inverter for the Renault Zoe in Hungary. The second-life component “lowers the price by 30 per cent compared to a new part and reduces the consumption of natural resources by at least 45 per cent,” according to the French supplier. The company paved the way for the refurbishment of the inverter together with the Renault-Suez joint venture, ‘The Future is Neutral’ and its subsidiary ‘The Remakers’.
Inverters are known to be a central element of the power electronics in electric cars. They convert the energy from the battery into alternating current to drive the vehicle’s electric motor. Valeo has now established an industrial process for refurbishing used inverters at its site in Veszprém, Hungary: “Each inverter is carefully cleaned, diagnosed, repaired, or has its defective components replaced before receiving a software update and undergoing a complete series of performance tests,” say the initiators. This process ensures quality equivalent to that of a new product.
This initiative aims to enable Renault customers to benefit from replacement parts at a lower price. Christophe Le Ligné, Vice President of Research & Development at the Valeo Group, comments: “We are pleased to put Valeo’s expertise at the service of THE REMAKERS, a subsidiary of The Future is NEUTRAL. Our expertise in remanufacturing enables us to offer the market a high-quality technological product at a more affordable price than new products, with equivalent performance. The remanufacturing of power electronics is an essential step in Valeo’s strategy to reduce the environmental footprint of the automotive market and achieve our decarbonization objectives.”
As Le Ligné mentioned, the market launch is the result of close collaboration between Valeo and the specialists at The Future is Neutral and its subsidiary The Remakers, based at Renault’s ‘Refactory’ in Flins. The Future is Neutral is a subsidiary of the Renault Group, founded in 2022, focuses on recycling. The company aims to “become the leader in the automotive circular economy in Europe by 2030,” as it stated at its launch three years ago. In 2024, the company announced that it would launch an after-sales offering for the Renault Group that includes reconditioned components for the French automaker’s electric vehicles.
At the time, The Future is Neutral announced that it would supply reconditioned electric motors for the Zoe, Twingo E-Tech, Kangoo E-Tech and Master E-Tech. It also announced that it would supply reusable power electronics for the Zoe and Kangoo E-Tech, as well as second-life batteries for the Zoe, Twingo E-Tech and Megane E-Tech. At the time, the French company also announced that Renault customers would in future have the choice between new original parts and refurbished components, which are up to 30 per cent cheaper, in the after-sales market.
The circular ecosystem is deliberately intended to extend beyond Flins – as the cooperation with Valeo now shows. In 2024, the Renault Group announced an ‘industrial and collaborative system for circular economy solutions from Flins to Bursa in Turkey and Seville in Spain’. The locations are to represent the four strategic pillars of retrofit, re-energy, recycle and restart. This means that Renault not only wants to recycle in the narrower sense, but also wants to overhaul and convert used cars, carry out battery analysis and repair, and promote the structural development of a circular economy through training, education and an incubation programme.
For its part, Valeo states that it also wants to make the circular economy a central component of its corporate strategy – “based on the principles of robust construction, repair, reprocessing and recycling.” According to the company’s headquarters, the aim is to design products for durability right from the development stage, give them a second life at the end of their life cycle through reprocessing to a quality equivalent to new products, and finally recycle materials as a last step.
valeo.com
This article was first published by Cora Werwitzke for electrive’s German edition
