Renault S.A.is a French manufacturer producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks and tractors. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker.Together Renault and Nissan are leading electric car development among major car companies, investing 4 billion euros ($5.16 billion) in eight electric vehicles over the next 3-4 years. Headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, Renault owns the Romanian automaker Automobile Dacia and the Korean automaker Renault Samsung Motors.
The company's most successful cars to date are the Renault Clio and the Renault Laguna, and its core market is Europe.The company is known its role in motor sport, and its success over the years in rallying and Formula 1. The French government owns a 15 percent share of Renault.
Signed on 27 March 1999, the Renault-Nissan Alliance is the first of its kind involving a Japanese and a French company, each with its own distinct corporate culture and brand identity, linked through cross-shareholding. Renault initially acquires a 36.8% stake at a cost of US$3.5 billion in Nissan, while Nissan in turn has a 15 percent stake (non-voting) in Renault. Renault continued to operate as a stand-alone company, but with the intent to collaborate with its alliance partner to reduce costs in developing new products. In the same year Renault bought 99% of the Romanian company Dacia, thus returning after 30 years, in which time the Romanians built over 2 million cars, which primarily consisted of the Renault 8, 12 and 20.
Following the sale of the Renault Vehicules Industrials truck and bus division to to Volvo in 2001, Renault retained a minority (but controlling) stake (20%) in the Volvo Group.
In the twenty-first century, Renault was to foster a reputation for distinctive, outlandish design. The second generation of the Laguna and Megane featured ambitious, angular designs which turned out to be successful, with the 2000 Laguna being the first European family car to feature "keyless" entry and ignition. Less successful were the company's more upmarket models. The Avantime, a bizarre coupe / multi-purpose vehicle, sold very poorly and was quickly discontinued while the luxury Vel Satis model did not sell as well as hoped. However, the design inspired the lines of the second generation Megane, the most successful car of the maker. As well as its distinctive styling, Renault was to become known for its car safety; currently, it's the car manufacturer with the largest number of models achieving the maximum 5 star rating in EuroNCAP crash tests. The Laguna was the first Renault to achieve a 5 star rating; in 2004 the Modus was the first to achieve this rating in its category.
In April 2010, Renault-Nissan announced a new alliance with Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler with Renault supplying Mercedes-Benz with its brand new 1.6 L turbodiesel engine and Mercedes-Benz to provide a 2.0 L four-cylinder petrol engine to Renault-Nissan. The resulting new alliance is to also develop a new model to replace the Smart with a new model based on the Renault Twingo.