Hector Fratty

DVN was invited to the Renault Technocentre at Guyancourt to visit their new car interior simulator with its highly detailed simulation of interior lighting. I took the opportunity to have a talk with lighting department head Jean-Philippe Benoist, as well as Jean-François Dacquay, formerly the Mégane project manager and now in charge of innovations.

Renault lighting strategy
Renault want to use the new technologies and innovative concepts at an affordable cost in relationship with styling needs, to provide appearance differentiation. As Laarens Van den Aarens explained at the last VISION Congress, Renault do not want to follow costly premium innovations, they specifically want to make attractive and affordable innovations.

Styling, performance, and cost
These three points are strongly linked for Renault, who feel they must have good performance for safety but also must convince management to put money into technology which gives styling differentiation and a specific signature at an affordable price. Mr. Benoist says “We are succeeding in this way with the LED coming in all new cars and the new challenge is to have LEDs soon in all the newly-launched cars, including entry models”.

Innovation department
I was privileged to see very interesting innovations under development—but they’re not (yet) eligible for publication; we’ll have to keep our collective eyes and ears on Renault to see the nifty lighting ideas they will bring to market. I can say they showed me impressive prototypes. Maybe we will soon see these innovations in a new Renault car in the coming years.