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Change of course: Renault and Mercedes invest heavily in the military sector
The defense sector is attracting the attention of companies in the automotive industry, with Renault and the German company Mercedes announcing projects and partnerships focused on this sector. Renault will invest in the production of military drones for France, while Mercedes announced a partnership with Tytan Technologies to produce anti-drone vehicles.
The Renault group has been discussing partnerships with manufacturers of weapons and armored vehicles after the French Ministry of the Armed Forces appealed to the car manufacturer, and other industrial companies, to support the country's drone production.
Sources consulted by the Financial Times stated that the French company is committed to preserving its automotive identity geared towards commercial consumption. Renault, which has the French state as one of its main shareholders, has been conservative regarding military production by establishing an informal limit of 5% on sales, seeking to ensure that the company does not violate investors' environmental, social and governance (ESG) guidelines regarding loans, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to the British newspaper.
In January, Renault signed an agreement with the defense company Turgis Gaillard to create a French military drone industry, through its factories in Le Mans and Cléon, in a potential contract worth one billion euros over ten years.
Vehicle manufacturers around the world are going through a crisis driven by overproduction, coupled with a drop in demand and the need to produce fewer combustion engines and more electric and electrified models, hence the succession of announcements of factory closures. To resist this trend, Mercedes and Renault have opted to diversify their production, betting on new products. This time not to serve the public, but rather the armies of their respective countries.
Riding the wave of European rearmament, Renault has converted its historic Le Mans factory, in operation since 1920 and more recently named Manufacture Louis Schweitzer (in honor of the brand's president and CEO between 1990 and 2005), very complete facilities that include foundry, stamping and several automatic production lines. But don't think that Renault will stop manufacturing its vehicles, models like the Clio, the R5 and Scenic E-Tech, since Le Mans now essentially produces parts for various vehicles of the brand, with most remaining on site, in parallel with the drones.
The French brand's foray into the manufacture of military drones is carried out in partnership with Turgis Gaillard, a supplier to the French armed forces specializing in flying drones for attack and surveillance, some with great autonomy and armament capacity. Renault will place some of the 300 engineers working in Le Mans and redirect some of the factory's production lines to produce drones of a new type, called Chorus.
The Chorus is a long-range drone, capable of flying 3000 km and carrying 500 kg of armament, which was developed based on lessons learned from similar Ukrainian industries. Renault will produce up to 600 Chorus drones per month in Le Mans once it reaches cruising speed (expected within a year), with the first units of this drone to be delivered to the French military as early as 2026, at a cost of around €100,000 per unit.
While Renault builds drones, Mercedes shoots them down...Mercedes also saw European rearmament as an opportunity, partnering with Tytan Technologies, a manufacturer of short-range drones designed exclusively to attack and shoot down approaching enemy drones. The memorandum of understanding signed between Tytan and Mercedes, made public at ILA 2026 in Berlin, provides for the integration of Tytan's sensors, radars and interception drones into Mercedes vehicles adapted according to needs.
Mercedes vehicles adapted for transporting Tytan's anti-drone systems (image above)Currently, the German manufacturer has designed some prototypes for testing, based on a Sprinter 4×4 van with increased ground clearance, as well as a military version of the G-Class. In both cases, the interior is full of screens to monitor the detection of enemy drones and track the evolution of Tytan's counter-attack drones.
This is the basis of the European anti-drone defense system, which is very agile and designed to attack enemy drones, especially Russian ones, that insist on invading the airspace of European Union countries. Europe's weakness lies in the fact that, to date, there is no defense system capable of countering invading drones, which this Tytan-Mercedes partnership aims to change. And the interest of car manufacturers in investing in the arms industry is understandable, since the competition that European brands face from Chinese rivals in electric vehicles — largely due to pressure from German manufacturers to facilitate the entry of electric vehicles from China — can never happen in the arms industry due to security concerns.


