Design-to-Cost or the art of designing right

“The starting point is not what it costs… but what it will need to cost.”

In the automotive industry, everything begins with a demanding and subtle equation: a future vehicle must appeal to customers, embody the brand’s DNA, integrate the right technologies… while remaining profitable. And in an industry where competition is fierce, waiting until the end of development to factor in all these parameters is already too late.

That is precisely the challenge of Design-to-Cost.

This target becomes the “North Star” of the development process. It mobilises every available lever (from technical choices and component design to industrialisation strategies) to ensure the economic framework is respected while, of course, delivering value to customers.

At Renault Group, the Design-to-Cost approach begins very early, even before the first prototype is built. Upstream project phases, market research, product positioning, customer expectations, feature levels, competition and profitability targets all contribute to defining a clear technical and economic trajectory.

“The starting point is not what it costs, but what it will need to cost,” stresses Patrick Faitout. The budget target is then broken down across every scope (platform, engine and beyond) as well as every vehicle component and part. A true precision mechanism designed to deliver the best possible performance.

In concrete terms, the teams explore multiple avenues, compare different options and assess their impact on the project’s overall economic balance. Design, for instance, is not just about styling: certain decisions can significantly affect costs. This is particularly true of lighting signatures, whose architecture or level of sophistication can have a major budgetary impact. By highlighting these challenges very early on, the teams help steer decisions towards solutions that are both attractive to customers and consistent with the vehicle’s technical and economic objectives.

This is precisely how certain innovations become possible: by identifying the right technical and economic levers, teams can unlock new solutions. In an electric vehicle, for example, a few extra kilometres of range or a few minutes gained in charging time can represent several hundred euros in additional cost. Design-to-Cost therefore enables more refined trade-offs: investing more in a technology perceived as essential by customers, simplifying elsewhere, sharing certain components or rethinking specific architectures in order to preserve the project’s overall balance.

“Design-to-Cost stimulates innovation because it pushes teams to collectively find the most relevant solutions,” highlights Patrick Faitout.

USFTs: The heart of the collective engine

At Renault Group, Design-to-Cost operates like an ecosystem. At the centre of this organisation is a strategic structure that is fairly unique in the automotive industry: the USFTs, or Upstream Strategy Functional Teams.

“A USFT brings together a threefold organisation made up of Engineering, Purchasing and Costing. Its mission is to achieve the best possible technical and economic performance in support of the product,” explains Stéphanie Lozachmeur.

Engineers, buyers and costing specialists work together continuously, far beyond the scope of a single vehicle project. They analyse competitors (particularly Asian manufacturers), monitor technological and economic market developments, study existing solutions, assess suppliers, define component strategies and build shared action plans. This cooperation also represents a valuable time gain in a context where development cycles are being challenged with timelines reduced to less than two years.

And the earlier teams get involved, the broader the range of possibilities becomes. Modifying a component before a project is launched costs infinitely less than redesigning it once suppliers have been engaged, tooling has been commissioned or industrial production lines have already been validated. That is why Renault Group’s teams work in parallel (and sometimes even in direct co-development) with suppliers.

This collaboration also helps avoid a classic pitfall: optimising locally without considering the overall impact. A cheaper component that is more complex to assemble? An attractive innovation that cannot be industrialised at scale? A highly efficient part that cannot be reused on other vehicles? The role of the USFTs is precisely to identify the right combinations.

From kaizen to shared platforms: smart complexity reduction

Design-to-Cost is not limited to a single method: it encompasses a whole range of approaches, from the most structuring design choices to the finest adjustments.

It can take the form of kaizen: continuous, incremental improvements that become highly significant when applied across hundreds of thousands of vehicles brought to market. A modified material, a simplified component, a few grams saved, a removed part or an avoided assembly operation… In the automotive industry, saving just a few cents on one component can ultimately represent millions of euros over a vehicle’s entire lifecycle.

But Renault Group is also driving another key principle: cross-functionality. The idea? Designing components, modules or platforms that can be shared across several vehicles and brands.

“Design-to-Cost is not just a local, project-by-project approach. It is also a broader approach based on cross-functional design,” explains Stéphanie Lozachmeur.

This strategy helps reduce part diversity, increase volumes and optimise both engineering costs and the associated industrial investments. It is within this framework that two other key players come into action: the Cross Car Line department, which works alongside Engineering, Purchasing and Costing teams to define a shared strategy for reusing components and modules across multiple projects, and the Architecture department, which designs standardised interfaces and packaging dimensions.

“Sharing a component across a large number of vehicles generates significant production volumes, which in turn create broader optimisation opportunities, both in terms of competitiveness and resilience,” summarises Christophe Gaudron.

The evolution of front-end modules (FEMs) at Dacia is a good illustration of the Design-to-Cost approach in action.

A vehicle front-end module is a component installed at the front of the vehicle (generally directly onto the body structure) to support the headlamps, the bonnet latching system, sometimes the grille, as well as other elements such as the radiator. These functions require the module to provide strong overall rigidity and particularly high resistance in the area connecting the bonnet latch point to the body structure.

Historically, the Group’s vehicles relied on large and complex plastic structures to ensure a high level of geometric quality and assembly precision. Dacia initially adopted a more frugal approach based on sheet-metal structures, more closely aligned with the brand’s accessible positioning. Then, as regulatory, customer and product requirements evolved, an intermediate solution emerged: a hybrid architecture combining sheet-metal elements for rigidity and plastic components for functional integration and industrial optimisation.

The same logic applies to shared platforms, architectures and certain technical modules: the more teams design cross-functional solutions, the greater the performance gains.

“Design-to-Cost is a key competitive advantage,” concludes Patrick Faitout.

Design-to-Cost is not a new approach at Renault Group. Vehicles such as Logan (a breakthrough product in terms of both production and selling price), Kwid, whose investment costs were divided by three, or even the first Twingo, innovative through its simplicity, were already strong illustrations of this philosophy: challenging established standards, frugal innovation, local sourcing and the intelligent reuse of proven components.

But today, it has become essential. “In an extremely competitive automotive industry, marked by a spectacular acceleration of technologies, it is no longer enough to rely on past achievements,” confirms Stéphanie Lozachmeur. “You have to constantly monitor the market, maintain active technological watch and continuously challenge yourself in order to remain at the forefront of performance.”

This context requires both a continuous improvement mindset and the ability to trigger deeper breakthroughs whenever necessary. The “small steps” taken every day (design adjustments, optimised technical choices, the ability to focus efforts where the impact will be greatest) ultimately generate significant gains at scale. But the rapid evolution of the sector also demands the ability to rethink certain approaches more radically. In both cases, Design-to-Cost plays a key role: it enables Renault Group to innovate pragmatically and to design high-performance vehicles at the right level, aligned with customer expectations.