Laurent Gonnet is a mechanical engineer with a Master’s degree in engineering and 30 years of experience in automotive product development, he has held a variety of management positions spanning product leadership, hierarchical management, and project or program management. Based in Lyon, France, he is pragmatic and business-oriented, with a strong ability to challenge organizations to meet both customer and business expectations.
What was your original motivation to become a researcher/project manager?
I am a senior project manager. As an engineer, I have started by developing new automotive products.
As a project manager, I am pleased to lead cross-functional teams to deliver more and more complex products to the market.
What is your (main) research area today?
Renault Trucks has launched its serial production BEV trucks several years ago with the Medium Duty trucks. Renault Trucks has started the production of the T-BEV in 2024 and now we are investing in the long-haul trucks. We are supporting our customer in their transition towards zero emission transport solutions by extending our product offer.
What is the focus of your team in ZEFES?
ZEFES will heavily contribute to expose our new Renault Trucks T780 to the strong and real logistic missions. The truck will reach the market soon; we prepare 3 logistic missions with our partners and operators. This is mainly about optimizing the logistic flow in the complete eco system, pending on infrastructures availability, trucks range capacity and within various regulation (about driver, roads, national regulation vs Europe…). We will learn a lot!
From all your activities within the project, what are you the most proud of/keen to share with the public?
I have prepared the application, and we have been awarded. I am pleased to get this project supported by my organization. This is a good opportunity to meet our customers in their daily operation while acting myself directly on Research and Development department. I bring my experience as project manager and pragmatism to lead it and meet partner expectations.
I am enthusiast in meeting our customers and future drivers of our trucks, understanding their expectations and constraints. The challenge is in front of us. I am proud to drive it and be part of the transition.
How do you expect the ZEFES results will impact your organisation and the transport sector in Europe?
I am convinced that we can support some current logistic flows with BEV vehicles. Some will be exactly as with diesel trucks, especially when the trucks move around a charging station. This is regional to national transport. For instance, Renault Trucks already supports some of its assembly plants logistics operations on a daily basis. It works well!
Long haul is definitively one step further. It will mainly depend on the infrastructures and its network in Europe. It is growing. Charging is also taking more time than refilling a diesel tank so this time must be considered in the overall logistic flow. We will have to adapt the logistic flows to these constraints. This is mainly why we are talking about eco-systems.
