Renault India has just inaugurated a state-of-the-art new design centre at its Technology & Business Centre outside Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The result of an investment of 1.5 million Euro (Rs 14.68 crore), the facility is the French car brand’s second largest global design studio after its flagship facility in Paris.
- New facility to design cars for India, Europe and other markets
- It features an ‘LED wall’ that displays designs in 1:1 size
Renault Design Centre Chennai
Not the brand’s first design studio in the country
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The Renault Design Centre Chennai (RDCC) was inaugurated by Renault Group chief design officer Laurens van den Acker, Renault India VP of sales and marketing Francisco Hidalgo, Renault India CEO and MD Venkatram Mamillapalle and India design studio head Julien Sabatier.
It is not, however, Renault’s first design studio in India. That was inaugurated in 2005 in Pune at the start of the brand’s India operations, even before it opened its manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu. Since then, there has been one in Mumbai and one in Chennai, all of which have since been folded into the new facility.
Renault to launch five cars in next two years
New ‘R-Store’ showrooms also being opened
The brand had alluded to this new facility at its ‘Renaulution’ event in 2024, where it also confirmed five new model launches for India in the next two years and the rollout of a new brand identity, including fully revamped ‘R-Store’ showrooms. It is also part of a bigger shift within the Renault Nissan Alliance, wherein the Japanese brand has exited the manufacturing JV at the Tamil Nadu plant, giving Renault full control.
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The new design centre features technology and facilities on par with Renault’s other global design studios and was designed to tap into the huge pool of design talent available in India. It features the likes of VR setups to help model in 3D, an 8.5×2.4m ‘LED wall’ to display designs in 1:1 size and virtual collaboration terminals to let the India team co-design with other design studios in real-time.
Global design hub
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What’s interesting is that the new facility will design cars not only for India (the new Duster is expected to get its own Indian touches) but also for Europe and other markets. In fact, the Renault R4 and R5 EVs recently launched in Europe were designed in collaboration with the previous Chennai studio.
Renault Rethink
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As a celebration of its inauguration, Renault unveiled the Rethink – a sculpture designed and built within RDCC intended to symbolise the integration of French and Indian culture, as well as traditional and digital design techniques. Bearing the basic silhouette of an SUV, the Rethink features screens that display abstract patterns that are a big part of the design process, as well as words in both English and Devanagari script.
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