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“It's ridiculous to buy a C-segment car just to take to school or the supermarket. You’re using tonnes of metal and lots of screens just to go to Tesco. It’s fair and intelligent to ask: ‘Have we gone too far?’”

Dacia CEO Denis Le Vot certainly thinks so, as does his boss, Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo, along with de Meo’s counterpart at rival firm Stellantis, executive chairman John Elkann.

De Meo and Elkann recently joined forces to call on European legislators to move away from EV mandates and instead focus on an overall reduction of CO2 emissions. Their goal is to preserve the affordable small cars that are being priced out of existence with the rise of costly EV tech and further active safety legislation.

Given that Dacia’s raison d’être lies in small, affordable cars, it ’s a topic that’s clearly in Le Vot’s wheelhouse. He is pleased that the conversation has entered the mainstream at the top of the industry, and it’s with legislators to do something about, to focus more on the “life-cycle assessment” of a car rather than its tailpipe emissions.

Can they really change their mind? “Yes,” comes his emphatic response. “It ’s just a question of time.” That time is within the next six months, when legislators will reconvene to check on the industry’s progress in hitting EV targets and review the legislation itself.

Le Vot has nothing against larger cars; he is currently overseeing the launch of the brand’s first C-segment SUV, the Bigster. Yet he laments the death throes of the A-segment.

“It has almost died,” he says, “pushing people straight into the B-segment. Now that’s suffering, so people would go straight to the C-segment.”

Even if you only want or need a small new car, you’re forced into something big, and this is directly affecting the affordability of new cars.

“Step back and you see that we have a problem,” Le Vot says. “Now is the moment to do something about it.”

De Meo’s and Elkann’s recent comments centred on CO2 emissions, but Le Vot also highlighted the active safety technology, namely GSR2 regulations, which require new cars to have a suite of extra safety tech, that is also driving up the price of small cars.

“Do we really need to have lane keeping assistance in a little family car?” he asks.

Le Vot also reiterated that Dacia won’t “chase stars” in terms of a Euro NCAP safety rating. He is a firm supporter of standards and standardised testing for passive safety, but he questions “the weight active safety has in the game” when deciding a car’s overall safety rating.

One thread binding all this is that any new car will be safer and less polluting than the one it is replacing.

As Le Vot reaffirms: “When you replace a car that is six, seven years old, you are doing a good job for the planet and its population.”

Almost four in five cars used by the UK government remain petrol, diesel or hybrid-powered, despite it having previously pledged to “lead by example” and transition to a completely electric fleet by 2027.

Data uncovered by Autocar sibling title What Car? via Freedom of Information requests reveals that just 22% of the cars used by the government are EVs. 

Meanwhile, 35% are diesels, another 35% are plug-in hybrids, 6% are petrols and the remaining 2% are regular hybrids.

The rate of electrification differs between government departments. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) said that 88% of its cars were EVs, whereas the Ministry of Justice said they accounted for just 16% of its car fleet.

Having lagged in switching to EVs itself, the government took punitive action against hybrid and PHEV drivers in the recent Spring Statement.

Vehicle excise duty rates for such cars were increased from £10-£30 to £110-£130, depending on their CO2 emissions – an increase of up to 11 times.

“It is completely wrong that the government is not cleaning up its own fleet at the same time that it is penalising ordinary drivers for not going electric by slapping higher taxes on low-emission alternative vehicles,” said What Car? editor Steve Huntingford.

Notably, the government that originally laid the plan to go completely electric – including its vans – by 2027 was a Conservative administration led by Boris Johnson.

The decision to “lead the way” and demonstrate that EVs were a viable option for fleets was set when Grant Shapps was the transport secretary – three governments, four transport secretaries and four years ago. 

"We will lead by example with 25% of the government car fleet ultra low emission by December 2022 and 100% of the government car and van fleet zero emission by 2027," read the Department for Transport paper setting out the policy.

It's unclear whether the current Labour government (and current transport secretary Heidi Alexander) intend to break from the Conservatives’ strategy.

However, it has already reversed its predecessors’ policies in key areas, such as delaying the ban on sales of new hybrid cars by five years to 2035.

When Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo walked in through the door of the Covid-wounded company in 2020, premium sports car brand Alpine had its neck on the chopping block.

“We had no plan after the A110; there was no plan for Alpine, basically,” de Meo told journalists at the recent unveiling of the A390.

But de Meo saw Alpine as an important margin-boosting premium asset so set in motion a revival – similar to what he did with Abarth while at the FCA Group and Cupra while at the Volkswagen Group.

The plan was agreed while Renault was still haemorrhaging millions. “It was a bit of a crazy thing," de Meo admitted. 

Now Alpine’s one-car line-up has been bolstered by the A290, a hot version of the Renault 5, and the new A390, a crossover based on the Renault Scenic platform but given a wallop of power and intriguing handling prospects from three electric motors.

After that, however, Alpine will dive headlong into the murky world of electric sports cars, where customers and profits are mere rumours rather than quantifiable fact. Can the brand really survive a lengthy period of capital-intensive adventuring into the unknown? 

De Meo is unshakeable even as he admits the scale of the job to create a credible rival to the likes of Porsche. “To launch a premium brand, you need 20 years, minimum,” he said. “It took Audi 25-30 years to be in the club – and every year billions and billions of investment. We're not going to do that in one generation.”

Renault doesn’t have billions of billions to spend on Alpine and, perhaps more damagingly, the brand’s formative years will be spent in a very different world to the relatively benign place that Audi ultimately flourished in. 

For one thing, the vast US premium car market is as good as off-limits for newcomers right now, and Alpine has put on ice plans for two bigger electric SUVs that were going to spearhead its launch there.

A single large SUV is still nominally in the pipeline, but it depends on a more welcoming US. 

“The business case flies with the US, because [the US is] 40% of the market in [the E-segment]. So until we have it clearly, it's a bit risky for us to push the button,” de Meo said.

It also means sourcing a platform from outside Renault – likely Chinese partner firm Geely.

The other global market that welcomed Audi was China, but that too has become a shark tank as local players prey on global incumbents and even each other in a merciless price war. Would Alpine launch there? “Maybe...” CEO Philippe Krief replied with a very Gallic shrug. 

Krief has plenty of experience in the fickle premium sector after spells at Ferrari, Maserati and Alfa Romeo, and he knows that Alpine has work to do. Right now, the brand has barely left its home country.

"Two thirds of our sales are in France," said Krief. "We need to learn to sell cars to Germany, to the UK, to Korea - markets that are really premium markets. And then we will go to the US.”

The first 'Atelier Alpine' showcase store will open in Barcelona this month, followed by Paris and London later in the year.

Alpine has already doubled its sales this year (to the end of April), thanks to the A290. Sales of the A110 hit 4585 last year, up 5.9%, but the sports car is essentially winding down before bowing out early next year.

Given the model's status as "the [Porsche] 911 of Alpine", in the words of de Meo, all eyes are now on the electric A110, which is due to be revealed at the 2026 Paris motor show.

The A110 traces its roots back to the first rally-bred, lightweight coupés based on the humble Renault 4CV, starting in 1955, and those early Alpines are heavily referenced in the current designs.

The current A110, launched in 2018, has done enough to keep the name alive and enthusiast interest stoked. The hard part now comes with the electric version.

What persuaded de Meo that the plan might work was that all his premium rivals were in the same boat. Regulations meant that, in Europe at least, everyone would have to make the shift.

“The transition to electric vehicles is an opportunity to say, on that kind of technology, more or less, we are on par with the others,” he said. “We don’t have a 100-year gap.”

De Meo also has a happy knack of understanding customer desires and concerns. “In the beginning, electric cars were kind of ugly, kind of unemotional,” he said. “Maybe we can prove that electric car technology can actually be fun, that we can put the soul in a washing machine.”

Firstly, we’re promised that new models based on the Alpine Performance Platform (APP) will weigh less than ICE rivals such as the Porsche Boxster, if not the outgoing lightweight aluminium-bodied A110 (a flyweight at 1102kg).

Secondly, Alpine will pioneer in-wheel motors, a potentially game-changing technology that lowers the centre of gravity and frees up room for luxuries like luggage and even rear passengers with the promised 2+2 version.

They can also instantly deliver power to the wheel with the most grip, promising new handling agility. And they can allow the energy-dense batteries to be packaged somewhere other than under the front occupants, giving a more sports car-like driving position.

And thirdly, the platform will have an 800V electrical system to enable ultra-fast charging, negating some range anxiety.

The APP will make its debut underneath the bonkers Renault 5 Turbo 3E, a £135,000 electric hyper-hatchback that's due in limited production next year and produces a claimed 3540 lb ft of torque from its in-wheel motors.

None of this ‘dream garage’ that Alpine is assembling is going to be high-volume. It won’t talk numbers, but given that the A390 is assembled at the same low-volume Dieppe plant as the A110, annual capacity will be 12,000 at best.

The A290 is better placed, with slots in Renault’s vast ElectriCity plant in Douai and a starting price of £33,500 instead of an estimated £60,000 for the A390.

But essentially Alpine is currently in the ‘notice me!’ phase. This is the brand-building slog to catch the eye of the premium buyer, which in Europe is heavily wedded to BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi with forays into Land Rover and Volvo. 

De Meo isn't scrimping on the marketing side of the Alpine revival, having renamed Renault's Formula 1 team to Alpine and batting back any suggestion of selling it, despite a run of poor results; and making Alpine a key player in the World Endurance Championship with the A424 hypercar. “At the core of Alpine is competition activity," he said.

Making a pointed link to the racing will be a 1000bhp hybrid hypercar arriving in around 2028, using a V6-engined drivetrain developed by Hypertech Alpine R&D, the renamed F1 engine facility located at Viry-Châtillon.

The Hypertec division is being used to more aggressively find overlaps between the world of motorsports and road cars – something that car companies have long struggled to achieve. 

All this work positions Alpine as a sportier premium brand sitting below the luxury players but also, it hopes, apart from the more everyday cars from the German premium brands.

“We are in a sort of in-between space, which is quite empty at the moment,” product chief Sovany Ang told Autocar.

Alpine doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as an EV brand, and the APP can accept combustion engines. “We are not selling electric cars; we are selling sporty cars, passion cars, exclusive cars,” Krief emphasised.

Crucially, Alpine keeps the thread linking to its 70-year-old heritage, giving it that backstory that challenger brands from China lack. “The original position of Alpine was about doing more with less. That’s really in the zeitgeist [of today],” said de Meo.

De Meo speaks about Alpine as a "fully fledged" car company with a plant, 2000-odd employees, 159 dealers, an F1 team, a dedicated development centre, an iconic car and a backstory. Krief meanwhile repeated a promise from 2022 that Alpine will be returning 10% profit margins by 2030. 

Renault has previously promised that Alpine will operate as a standalone company within the group, with its own profit and loss statements, working toward an eventual goal of a stock market floatation.

The appetite for automotive stocks, however, is very different now compared with 2022, and Renault needs all the help it can get countering investor apathy, despite its recent profitable run.

Bolting on a premium brand with the ability to leverage Renault tech and return double-digit margins will aid the group cause no end.

The UK new car market returned to growth last month as demand for electric cars soared, but the industry says the discounting behind the uptick is unsustainable and the government must do more to support the switch.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) notes that it was the best May for new car registrations since 2021 but still 18.9% down on the same month in pre-pandemic 2019. It is also only the second month of growth so far in 2025, "reflecting brittle consumer confidence and economic turbulence".

The organisation attributed the uptick primarily to a surge in fleet registrations, which climbed 3.7% year on year to just over 90,000, accounting for a 60% market share.

Private car sales, meanwhile, were down 2.3% and accounted for 37.4% of the market - and while business registrations grew by a substantial 14.4%, they still made up only 2.6% of registrations.

It was another month of growth for electric cars, with nearly 33,000 units registered – a 25.8% yearly increase – accounting for 21.8% of the market. That's still far below the 28% EV sales mix that manufacturers must achieve this year under the ZEV mandate, but well above the 13.6% and 11.9% shares held by hybrids and plug-in hybrids respectively.

The SMMT says the rise in EV registrations comes off the back of the "attractive incentives" manufacturers are offering in a bid to drive uptake, although the organisation repeated its call for the government to "match this commitment with fiscal incentives".

Halving VAT on new EV purchases, the SMMT says, would put 276,000 new EVs on the road in the next three years, in place of ICE vehicles, resulting in an annual reduction in CO2 emissions of six million tonnes. 

It also said the government could "send a signal that now is the time to switch" to EVs by reducing the VAT on public charging and removing electric cars from the Expensive Car Supplement (ECS) - a move the government is understood to be considering already. 

While EV sales were up, diesel's decline continued with a huge 15.5% drop in registrations last month, taking oil-burners to just a 5.2% market share. And while petrol cars still make up nearly half of registrations, their sales were down a heavy 12.5%. 

SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said: "A return to growth for new car registrations in May is welcome but manufacturer discounting on new products continues to underpin the market, notably for electric vehicles. 

"This cannot be sustained indefinitely as it undermines the ability of companies to invest in new product development – investments which are integral to the decarbonisation of all road transport. 

"Next week’s Spending Review is the opportunity for government to double down on its commitments to net zero by driving demand through fiscal measures that boost the market and shore up our competitiveness."