French automotive group, Renault (EPA:RENA) on Monday detailed the new software architecture of its future vehicles which it claims will be on par with Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) by 2026.
Automakers have been living for months under the threat of regular and drastic price cuts from Tesla. In France, the list price of the Tesla Model 3 now starts at the same level as the Renault Mégane electric, around €42,000 (€1 = $1.1043).
Though Renault's CEO, Luca de Meo, acknowledged at a presentation that Tesla remains a "challenge in the short term," he said his company will not engage in a price war on electric vehicles.
"We don't want to do what we did in the past, we want to sell our cars, we don't want to give away our cars," Renault's head of engineering, Gilles Le Borgne, said to journalists and analysts at the same event.
A "software-defined vehicle" design will be at the heart of Renault's future electric-vehicle entity, "Ampere," the French automaker said. Developed with Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google and Qualcomm Inc (NASDAQ:QCOM), it will considerably reduce complexity by allowing to have just 20 processors on board to run a car instead of the currently required one hundred.
"This is similar with Tesla, in 2026 they are going to have the same approach, they have the same EV architecture approach," said Renault's chief digital officer, Frédéric Vincent.
"In 2026, we will be at the level of Tesla in software defined vehicles," le Borgne added.
Shares of TSLA are down 1.43% near end of trading on Monday.