Romania’s Dacia announced that has plans in the near future to manufacture cars using alternative fuels and is also preparing to sell electric cars, digi24.ro informs. The move will be done following the global trend.
This comes after France announced recently that is joining a growing movement to force the extinction of vehicles that run on fossil fuels, saying that it would aim to end the sale of gasoline and diesel cars by 2040.
“It’s obviously how industry is getting ready for this, and Dacia is part of this transformation in the future. 2040 seems to be far away, but not very distant, so we have plans for Dacia in these directions. But it’s important to keep the brand’s DNA: keep Dacia as an affordable car,” Hakim Boutehra, Renault Commercial Roumanie CEO, stated.
He says that at the moment, “the biggest trend in the automotive industry around the world is to have more connectivity, more electric cars and more autonomous cars.” And this is also seen in the statistical data. Even though in Romania only 1 percent of the car market is not using traditional fuels, green car sales are rising year on year. Thus, in the first four months of this year, there have been sold three times (548) more electric and hybrid cars than in the same period last year.
French carmaker Renault, which owns Dacia, began selling battery-powered cars in 2011, and was among the first major carmakers to do so. While electric cars still only amount to a sliver of the market, sales have been growing fast. Renault sold 17,000 of its battery powered Zoe compact cars in the first six months of 2017, almost as many as in all of 2016.