Renault to Follow Nissan's Lead with iPhone-Targeted iAds
By John O'Dell December 7, 2010Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. was the first automaker to use Apple's iPhone as an advertising medium for one of its cars - the Leaf electric vehicle - and it must have been judged a success, because Nissan alliance partner Renault SA has just launched an "iAd" application of its own to market the upcoming and wonderfully named Twizy EV city car in Europe.
Renault is targeting the young and upwardly mobile as prime customers for the Twizy, w 
hich looks a bit like the offspring of Cinderella's pumpkin coach and a NASA moon buggy (not too many worries about copyright infringement on female names, either, as was the recent case with Renault and its coming Zoe EV, which brought a lawsuit on behalf of two French girls with the name).
Using Apple's new mobile advertising platform, the company figures it can hit several million people in its ideal demographic - iPhone and iPod Touch users all - with the Twizy message in the year before the car is launched.
In addition to singing the praises of the car and of EVs in general, the ad reportedly addresses concerns about EV range and shows how an owner's iPhone or iPod can be used to calculate charging times at the various public chargers being installed throughout Europe.
Nissan did the same thing with an iAd, launched last July in the U.S., for its Leaf, which starts being delivered to customers in the U.S. on Saturday.
The Twizy is slated to go on sale in Europe (sorry, no U.S. version planned) about a year from now. Pricing hasn't been set, but Renault said the tandem 2-seater will sell for somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 euros ($6,600 - $13.300 in today's dollars).
Image by Renault
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