For most of the past century, the European auto industry has been very good at one thing: building cars. But history has a way of bending manufacturing empires toward whatever the moment demands, and in 2025, that moment looks less like crossovers and EVs and more like geopolitics and unmanned aircraft.

Renault, a brand best known for hatchbacks, hot hatches, and the occasional Formula 1 title, has just agreed to build up to 600 military drones at its Le Mans facility in cooperation with French defense contractor Turgis Gaillard. It’s a move that sounds startling—until you remember that automakers have been pivoting into defense production for as long as there have been wars to fight.

Europe’s Auto Industry Is Looking for a Second Job

Europe is increasing defense spending at a pace not seen in decades. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reset the continent’s threat perception, and even distant rumblings—like former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Greenland rhetoric—have reinforced the idea that Europe needs to be more militarily self-reliant.

France alone plans to boost its defense budget by €36.5 billion by 2030, according to President Emmanuel Macron’s recent address to the armed forces. That kind of money needs factories, suppliers, and engineers—and Europe just happens to have an enormous industrial base that’s increasingly underused as car production slows.

That’s where companies like Renault come in.

The Le Mans plant, which normally produces chassis components for Renault, Dacia, and other brands within the group, built 1.3 million parts in 2024 and employs about 1,500 people. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of high-volume, high-precision manufacturing environment defense contractors dream of but rarely own.

Now, some of that capacity will be diverted to drones.

This Isn’t Renault’s First War

If this feels like a dramatic shift for a modern car company, it really isn’t. Renault’s military résumé goes all the way back to World War I, when it built the Renault FT, one of the world’s first modern tanks. Even today, Renault Trucks—though no longer part of the Renault Group—produces armored vehicles for the French Army.

What’s different now is the product. Instead of tanks and troop carriers, Renault is helping build drones: small, software-heavy, electronics-intensive machines that are closer in spirit to a modern EV than to a Sherman tank.

And that’s exactly why automakers are being called in.

Why Carmakers Are Suddenly Attractive to Defense Ministries

Modern military hardware is increasingly defined by three things: electronics, software, and mass production. That’s the same trio that defines the automotive industry in the EV and autonomous-driving era.

Tesla may be the most famous example of a car company drifting toward robotics and AI, but Europe’s legacy manufacturers have quietly been developing similar skills: battery management, sensor fusion, embedded computing, and high-reliability manufacturing at scale.

From a defense perspective, Renault doesn’t need to become Lockheed Martin. It just needs to do what it already does best—designing, industrializing, and mass-producing complex machines—and apply that to a different kind of vehicle.

Renault Won’t Be Alone

Renault’s drone project is just the tip of a much larger pivot across Europe’s supplier base.

• Valeo is already working with around 100 companies on defense-related drone systems.
• Schaeffler is developing electronic components for Helsing drones.
• Valmet is preparing to build armored vehicles.
• ZF Friedrichshafen and Bosch are also involved, even if they’re not yet treating defense as a core business.

The logic is brutal but simple: European car production is in long-term decline, squeezed by Chinese competition, EV transition costs, and shrinking margins. Defense, meanwhile, is flush with cash and desperate for industrial capacity.

If you’re an automotive supplier staring at half-empty factories, military contracts suddenly look a lot like survival.

Not a Farewell to Cars—But a Hedge Against the Future

Renault insists this drone project won’t affect its car plans and that it has no intention of becoming a major defense contractor. That’s probably true. But it’s also beside the point.

This isn’t Renault abandoning the car business—it’s Renault buying insurance against a European auto market that looks increasingly fragile. If EVs don’t sell, if factories sit idle, if global competition keeps tightening, having another customer with a multi-billion-euro budget is very comforting.

A century ago, Renault helped France fight a war with tanks. Today, it will help with drones. Same company, same factories, different machines.

The badge on the hood still says Renault. The payload just changed.

Source: Renault; Photo: Turgis Gaillard