Renault Trucks has inaugurated CampX, a new facility dedicated to innovation and collaboration at its Lyon site. The facility is part of the CampX by Volvo Group concept, which already exists in Sweden, India, and the USA, and is now being implemented in France. The mission of CampX is to accelerate technological and business innovation by connecting internal teams with external partners, mainly startups.
In a fast-evolving technological landscape, it is crucial to keep up with the latest cutting-edge developments for sustainable mobility to stay relevant and competitive. CampX Lyon aims to create even more efficient technical solutions, products, and services to meet the challenges of the future. The facility caters for an ecosystem of startups that have been selected based on three pillars: decarbonisation, urban logistics, and uptime.
Located at the heart of Renault Trucks’ headquarters in Lyon, CampX has been designed to accelerate technological and business innovation by providing space and tools that enable Renault Trucks’ experts to work closely with startups and partner companies. “At Renault Trucks, innovation and collaboration are key drivers for business,” explained Marc Bourgeois, Head of CampX Lyon. “Putting our experts together with partner startups allows us to accelerate innovation and come up with new solutions that will benefit not only Renault Trucks’ customers, but also the industry and society as a whole.”
The facility has already proven its effectiveness, with seven “win-win” partnership agreements already signed and some thirty companies in its portfolio. One of the use cases being worked on aims to drastically reduce truck downtime due to wiring problems. The sharing of knowledge and technology between the chosen startup and Renault Trucks’ experts has resulted in an innovative solution to improve the productivity of the network and thus contribute to improving customers’ vehicles uptime.
The CampX team is open for requests from Renault Trucks colleagues who are looking for technological or business opportunities together with partners. Once the two parties are matched, they can potentially form a partnership to collaborate and quickly find technical solutions. Designed to resemble a mini-campus, CampX Lyon features 400sq-m of facilities suitable for collaboration, including a creativity room, social area, mini-amphitheatre, and workstations, where Renault Trucks teams and startups can work side-by-side during the co-construction period. Everything is connected using the latest technology.
Created in 2019 by the Volvo Group, to which Renault Trucks belongs, the CampX concept is also being rolled out at Volvo Group sites in Gothenburg (Sweden), Bangalore (India), and Greensboro (USA). To date, CampX has enabled over 50 startups throughout the world to collaborate with the Volvo Group.
