Spying on Renault??
And especially - given Renault's appalling reputation for electrical faults - spying on their electric car division?
Would have been better to let it continue as a deliberate feed of damaging information.
Paris cos it's France.
Renault fingers three for spying
French car giant Renault has suspended three senior executives for alleged industrial espionage offences. The company said that the three had been suspended without pay for ethical issues following an investigation. Anonymous sources told Reuters: "It involves people who were caught red-handed for industrial espionage. It's a …
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Thursday 6th January 2011 10:09 GMT Matt Bryant
Renault had electric secrets?
The only "secret" Renault has around vehicle electrics seems to be how to make a car completely unreliable. And it's hardly a secret - Citroen and Peugeot have been doing the same for years! As I understand it, all the real development (including the electric car work) is actually being done by Nissan in Japan.
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Thursday 6th January 2011 12:07 GMT Big Al
Espionage? Really?
Hard to believe that six 'senior' people were all on the take from the competition...
How sure are we that these weren't just some enthusiastic and/or idealistic bunny-huggers keen to tell friends in the industry how well things were going?
Leaking, rather than spying, in other words.
Terminator icon because obviously electric cars are just the next step to robots taking over the world.
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Thursday 6th January 2011 12:13 GMT MinionZero
Senior executive industrial espionage
I doubt its industrial espionage of the vehicles electrical systems. Its far more likely industrial espionage of marketing plans etc... Plus the electrical systems to create an electric car are hardly rocket science, so not much to take).
Its far more likely marketing information, such as when and for how much products will be released and into what markets and with what feature sets and via which distributors who are being signed up in which territories etc... That sort of thing. As that's very valuable info to competitors, as they can then work to undercut the company. Which is the way senior executives think about business, i.e. finding ways to control people, as in finding ways to influence and undermine competitors businesses, to gain a bigger area of control over part of the market.
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Thursday 6th January 2011 13:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Senior Exec - Technical Knowledge???
Very unlikely to have leaked anything technical, because senior execs got where they are today by ignoring anything technical other than buzzwords. Most were bean-counters / sales or technical-pretenders that have been promoted into something more "managerial".
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Thursday 6th January 2011 14:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Va-Va-BzzzzzzT!
Its not the extra electrical toys that are the problem, its the fact that their cars leak!
its water getting in and corroding and shorting the unsealed looms and PCB's.
A bit of conformal coating and some decent weatherproofing on the exposed sections of the looms would fix most problems.
The only secret that should get out is how they get away with charging soo much for spare parts for cars that are less than 10 years old!
and dont even get me onto the Anti-EU Regulation, Anti-Competative, Closed practices regarding CLIP diagnostics on all the OBDC-II / CAM-BUS fitted cars
if we Renault drivers want to PIMP our cars up, we should be able to!
along with being able to fix our cars without being forced to flush money down the drain on OverPriced Renault Dealership Clip diagnostics checks after which the mechanics still cant fix most faults first time without replacing almost all the wiring and electronics modules.
(which must be supplied direct only by renault and not from spares from scrapped cars).
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Thursday 6th January 2011 16:57 GMT Mike Flugennock
Reminds me of a great old joke...
...I was told by an old bud of mine who did all of his own mechnical work -- mostly on VW Beetles, Karmann Ghias and Rabbits, but also the occasional GT6 -- about the electrical systems on British cars:
Q: Why do the British drink their beer warm? A: Lucas Refrigerators!
Said old bud also frequently referred to Lucas as "Lucas, Prince Of Darkness".
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Friday 7th January 2011 09:47 GMT Des
Spying on Renault?
Why?
As a previous Renault owner I will never touch another Renault in my life; we had an 3.0 V6 dCi Espace from new and it lasted less than 50,000 miles. After sending the car in for a minor water leak we got an initial estimate back for £2,500. This went up to first £6,000 and then £11,500 as Renault UK got involved. As the car was 5 years old and not worth that we were obviously not prepared to pay; my wife complained and argued with Renault over the costs. Renault ended up paying us to go away, and we switched to another brand.
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