Renault COO Carlos Tavares told the media at the Paris Motor Show that the French carmaker had applied to create a vehicle production capacity in the world’s largest auto market. The requests "were made at the beginning of September to Chinese authorities to grant us manufacturing licences," he said. "We hope that by the end of the year we will have positive signals which would allow us to build a factory at the beginning of next year."

Renault’s share of the Chinese market is tiny but expands fast, with sales growing 65% on year in 2011 to 24,275 and 15% in the first half of this year (about 90% of the 2011 sales came from Koleos.) Its Japanese ally Nissan, by contrast, is a giant here, selling 1.25 million cars last year. China currently accounts for 1/4 of Renault-Nissan’s global sales, while the alliance has only 7.4% of the Chinese market.

Renault expects to work with Dongfeng Motor, the Chinese partner of Nissan, to build the local factory. We learned from Kimiyasu Nakamura, an executive VP at Renault, at this year’s Beijing auto show that the French company signed a memo with Dongfeng in late March this year, planning to create a vehicle production capacity in China which would rise gradually to 200,000-300,000 units a year.

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