Renault Group’s electric vehicles (EV) unit Ampere is to launch seven models by 2031, including a city car called the Legend priced at under £17,000.

The Legend will be built at its Renault's factory in Slovenia from 2026 and will offer best-in-class efficiency with energy consumption of 10 kilowatt-hours per 100 km, improving on the 15 kWh/100km of most small BEVs currently available. Renault's factory in Slovenia, already builds battery-electric and combustion engine versions of the Twingo minicar.

Ampere's lineup will also include the Megane E-Tech (pictured), launched last year; the Scenic E-Tech, which goes on sale early next year; the forthcoming Renault 5 to be revealed early next year; and the Renault 4 to be launched in 2025.

CFO Thierry Pieton said Renault which is currently the third largest EV manufacturer in Europe in 2022, behind Tesla and Volkswagen aimed to achieve price parity of smaller models with its combustion engine cars in the next two years and larger ones by 2027-28.

"We want to democratise EVs in Europe. We will reduce our costs to lower our prices, while improving our margins at the same time,” he said.

He added that Ampere will have revenues of about €2.8 billion this year and will target €10 billion in revenues in 2025 on sales of 300,000 EVs. Revenues are targeted at more than doubling to €25 billion in 2031 on sales of 1 million cars – with breakeven planned for 2025.

Renault said it plans to list Ampere - which started operating separately from its parent in November - in the first half of next year, floating around 20% of its capital, and retaining between 60% and 70% of the business.

Pieton said Renault would not sell off Ampere at a discount and would evaluate other options if market conditions did not support the expected €8 billion - €10 billion valuation.

He said Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors were planning to invest up to €800 million in Ampere, with Qualcomm also considering taking a stake in the business.

Pieton added that Renault will 'always be open to exploring alternative options' for Ampere if the IPO doesn’t go through and that Mitsubishi and Nissan would likely still invest in Ampere albeit 'in a different form'.

To defend its position from cheaper Chinese EV imports, he said Ampere will reduce by 40% the cost of manufacturing cars by 2027 by offering fewer models and cutting design costs and reducing individual unit production time to less than 10 hours.