Renault to carry on with separating electric and combustion engine businesses

French automaker Renault SA will carry on with its plan to carve out electric and combustion-engine businesses, even without its Japanese auto-making partner Nissan. The plan of splitting up of the struggling automaker's operations is gaining traction after it held talks with French unions and had discussions with top management of its alliance partners - Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors Corp.

Renault's Chief Executive Officer Luca de Meo has said that the company has to carry out this process and that it has opened the door for them to each project. In an interview with Bloomberg Television, he said, "At the end it’s their decision if they want to jump in the boat, but the train is leaving the station."

De Meo has pledged to reveal details of the transformative plan in the fall after “transparent" discussions with the Japanese companies - Nissan and Mitsubishi. He added that hundreds of people are working on the projects that may go beyond spinning off an EV operation and could include other partners, he said in the interview. “We’re talking to a lot of people," he said, adding that these include potential partners from the automotive and tech industries.

De Meo also said that relations between Renault and Nissan and Mitsubishi management are “very good", and pointed that the upcoming initiatives for joint industrial projects are in pipeline.

In a separate development, Renault raised its financial outlook for the year in a bid to draw a line under the company’s costly withdrawal from the Russian market.