Renault has ended production of the Mobilize Duo and Bento quadricycles, and is shuttering its Mobilize car sharing division, as they both have “limited profitability prospects”.
Mobilize was launched in 2021 as part of then CEO Luca de Meo’s Renaulution plan, and was conceived as a way of diversifying Renault’s revenue streams beyond selling vehicles. At its debut, the company said Mobilize would account for 30 per cent of the group’s revenues by 2030.
The Mobilize division stood alongside the Renault, Dacia and Alpine brands, and housed “everything beyond automotive”, such as car sharing, EV charging, remanufacturing, and the not-quite-a-car Duo and its Bento cargo-carrying sibling.
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Thanks to its small size, limited power and top speed, some Duo variants qualified in a number of European countries as a quadricycle, allowing it to be driven licence-free by people as young as 14. Other competitors in this class include the Citroen Ami and Fiat Topolino.
Measuring 2.43m long, 1.3m wide and 1.46m tall, the Morocco-built Duo was effectively a replacement for the Renault Twizy. It sat two people in an offset tandem layout. The Bento ditched the rear seat in order to fit a 649L cargo pod at the back.
The Duo was available with either a 6kW or 16kW electric motor driving the rear wheels. The 6kW version had a top speed of 45km/h, while the 16kW variant could hit 80km/h.
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Both versions used a 10.3kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery that was said to have a range of around 160km under the WMTC (World Motorcycle Test Cycle) standard.
Along with the demise of the Duo and Bento, Mobilize’s Zity car sharing service in Milan, Italy has been closed, and the service in Madrid, Spain will be phased out from 2026.
What’s left of Mobilize will be folded back into the Renault mothership, but the brand will live on, for now, on the automaker’s wall chargers, charging network, and ChargePass payment platform, as well as a suite of financial services.
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Renault says Mobilize “fulfilled its role as an incubator and innovation driver by strengthening the Group’s expertise in new areas, identifying and developing high-potential opportunities, and discontinuing less relevant paths”.
In Renault’s eyes, Mobilize’s key achievements included rolling out 160 charging stations across France and Italy, and launching the what it claims to be the first commercially available vehicle-to-grid charging system, which opened to customers in France in 2024, and the Netherlands in 2025.
