Renault’s secret Lego prototype
The prototype for Renault’s new E-Tech hybrid system was created using Lego, the French car maker has revealed.
Renault hybrid architecture expert Nicolas Fremau had dreamed up a radically simple new way to electrify internal-combustion engines. He was part of a team tasked with creating a detailed proposal for a hybrid system to meet the company’s requirements. It had to be affordable, light, suitable for vehicles of all sizes and with a minimum electric range of 50km in plug-in form.
Fremau first sketched his ideas on paper, but this wasn’t enough. “When I saw my son playing with Lego Technic sprockets at home, I said to myself ‘well, it’s not so far from what I’d like to do’,” he recalls. So he went out and bought the kits he needed to get started.
Over a Christmas holiday break he spent around 20 hours carefully building a working prototype of his innovative three-speed, dog-clutch equipped hybrid. “I had the idea of doing this first to help me understand what to do,” Fremau says.
Construction wasn’t exactly child’s play. The engineer had to assemble the different axles and transmission rings, glue and drill them to fit into a cradle and motorise the whole thing.
The finished project meant Fremau could physically test the different possible modes of operation between the power sources. He even discovered new ones he’d not thought of during his theoretical work.
Fremau then had to present what is probably the least expensive prototype in Renault’s history to his bosses. “The day I brought the model to the project manager Gérard Detourbet and the director of research Rémi Bastien, I didn’t know how they would react.”
They were impressed. “I will always remember Gérard Detourbet’s remark: ‘If we can make it in Lego, it will work!’”
Fast-forward a couple of years, and E-Tech is in production. Both full hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants are being manufactured, and in Europe these are offered in the Clio, Captur, Megane and new Arkana ranges.
The new Captur is about to arrive here. But Renault Australia has decided not to bother with the E-Tech hybrids, opting instead to import the little SUV only with a 1.3-litre petrol engine and a seven-speed double-clutch transmission.
Maybe they’re just Lego-phobic, but the more likely explanation is that they don’t believe Australians care too much about efficiency or environmental impact.
