Today you buy your car and drive away from the dealership. In the future, you will buy an electric vehicle, rent a battery and sign a contract to use recharge stations located in the street, near the office and in parking lots.

That makes three operations to take into account. People will be able to do all of them at the dealership as part of a one stop shop – car purchase, battery hire and energy contract included.

There could be a range of different offers, as in the world of mobile phones. First possibility: you simply pay each time you charge your car at a station (around €2 to “fill up” the car).

Another possibility would be to subscribe to a monthly price plan. For example, you could get 1,000 km in mileage for a €20 monthly fee.

We will be able to bring each customer a tailored package that is fitted to their vehicle use.

We’re looking at three possibilities.

First, charging at home, also known as “standard” charging, takes between 3.5 and 8 hours. The best time to do this is at night, so your car’s fully charged and ready to go the next day. To charge at home, two methods are available:you can either plug your vehicle via a Wall-Box (which protects the domestic circuit) or use an EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) offered as an option. The recommended option is the Wall-Box with the advantages of ergonomics, speed, load optimisation and protection of both the domestic circuit and the vehicle.

The second possibility is taking your car to a fast charge station, which will provide your car a 37 miles range in less than 10 minutes or 80% battery capacity in 30 minutes. This option will first be available for ZOE, and later on, on Fluence Z.E. and Kangoo Z.E..

The third option is a an original idea by Renault, consisting of battery exchange stations called “quickdrop”. It will be a little like driving into an automatic car wash, only the machine will remove your car’s battery and replace it with another. In three minutes you will get a fully charged battery. This scheme is currently planned in Israel, Denmark and Australia, in partnership with Better Place.

We are developing the “quick drop” technology together with Nissan. It is likely that other carmakers will adopt the same principle. The main problem is that batteries today have different shapes depending on the vehicle. So if other brands wanted to use these stations, we would obviously have to standardize batteries. I think that in the long term, we will be able to make the “quick drop” stations compatible for all electric vehicles.

In terms of charging stations, we are holding discussions at a European level with all the carmakers to make sure everyone uses the same socket format.

It would take an electric car population of millions to have any impact on electricity consumption and production. Our electricity capacity is completely underused at night, so if customers are persuaded to recharge their cars at night there will be no impact on energy production.

Obviously the story would be different if half the car population were to become electric. I’d love that to be the case, but I think it’s something only my successor will see…

Key data:

• 87% of car trips in Europe are under 60 km
• The Renault-Nissan Alliance is investing €4 billion in EVs
• Range: around 160 km for normal vehicle use
• 10-year projection: EVs could account for 15% to 25% of annual car sales in Europe
• Nissan has been working on lithium-ion battery design since 1992
• Standard battery charge (at home): 3,5 to 8 hours; fast charge: 20 minutes; battery exchange at “quick drop” station: 3 minutes.