Renault’s CTO has recently announced that one of the ways it plans to reduce the costs associated with manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs) is to bring down manufacturing times and improve factory throughput. Its Renault 5 EV will take just 10 hours to assemble, compared to 14 hours for a similar internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. Falling manufacturing times will largely be fueled by more efficient and increasingly automated processes. There will likely be more off-site manufacturing of components like drivetrains and batteries, which will be included in assembly times but not manufacturing due to the likelihood of it being imported. Broadly this will result in some of the marginal cost improvements necessary to succeed within the EV industry. It will…