“Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr Bond. I expect you to die!”

Espionage, spies and conspiracy aren’t the words you normally associate with car manufacturing, however it doesn’t mean that spying isn't unheard of and in industry as competitive as the car industry, any means to gain the upper hand over a rival is always welcomed even if the acquisition could be deemed to be illegal. As the old adage goes “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
In early January, three Renault executives were accused of selling information to rivals, the men in question were Michael Balthazard, senior vice president for advance engineering, his deputy Bertrand Rochette and Matthieu Tenebaum the deputy head of the electric vehicle programme. All men denied the accusations and launched lawsuits for defamation against Renault. The investigation only began because of a anonymous tip-off last September, this information was immediately presented to Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault-Nissan, with both Renault’s internal security department and DCRI, France’s domestic intelligence agency, an investigation was initiated. Though no fingers were pointed at China, many believed that they were the culprits, which China vehemently denied. Since Chinese car makers have a past record of copying entire cars and they’ve been cases of Chinese employees working for American car companies, who have been accused of trying to sell secrets to Chinese car manufacturers.
While on French television, Carlos Ghosn spoke about the scandal, believing that Renault’s investment model for electric vehicles had been sold and not its technology.
It was later determined that the scandal may have been a hoax, since the investigation hasn’t come up with any evidence, though DCRI are still investigating the matter, a senior executive within Renault accepted that the industrial spy scandal was a hoax.
It has lead to relations between the government and Renault to become strained, Patrick Pelata, Renault’s chief operating officer had this to say “A certain number of elements have led us to doubt, either we are facing an act of espionage and a member of our security team is protecting his source . . . or Renault is the victim of a manipulation . . . which could take the form of a fraud. In this case, we would offer to reinstate the three executives and Renault would make up for any injustice”.

This story isn’t a needle in haystack, industrial espionage is alive and well within all industries, the need to out compete and to remain profitable has always been an incentive for companies to pay for industrial secrets no matter the consequences. The most public case of recent being the F1 spy gate, in which former Ferrari engineer Nigel Stepney was accused and found guilty of selling information to McLaren engineer Mike Coughlan, both men were fired immediately after the transgression was detected.
Though these stories appear to be isolated, these are the stories that were able to break web of secrecy and see the light of the day. It wouldn’t be in any carmaker’s interest for the public to know that technology that they've touted as the next step in the evolution of the car has; been acquired by their rivals. So how many more stories do we not know of, in industry dominated by perception and brand image, bad publicity can sometimes be the worst publicity for any carmaker. Look at the example of Toyota’s recall debacle, Toyota was at the time doing quite well, even with the recession in full swing, but when faults with their vehicles were made public and may have caused the death of their owners, Toyota’s stock and sales took a nose dive.
Ian Fleming may have romanticized the art of spying in the Bond movies, but it is still a dirty game, in which information has truly become a commodity worth selling your integrity for.