As a child, I believed that every LEGO set I completed brought me one step closer to being an engineer. And as it turns out, that’s not totally outlandish, as Renault proved during the development of the transmission for its E-Tech hybrid system.

The system is available in the hybrid and PHEV 2020 Clio, Captur, and Megane models and Renault loves to mention how it’s inspired by Formula 1 technology. But in trying to work out how to make the system work in an economy car, engineer Nicolas Fremau turned to the decidedly lower-tech world of LEGO.

“When I saw my son playing with LEGO Technic sprockets at home, I said to myself ‘well, it’s not so far from what I’d like to do’. So, I bought what I needed piece by piece to have all the assembly elements,” said Fremau.

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The set model ended up taking Fremau about 20 hours to complete. That’s not just because he was building it without an instructional booklet but because he had to create his own pieces with glue and a drill.

But it turned out to be very useful. The set could easily be put together and taken apart and that allowed Fremau to think of new ideas that hadn’t occurred to him when he was designing on paper.

The result was a transmission that has no clutch and is connected to two electric motors, as well as the engine. Renault says that with E-Tech, 80% of city driving can be handled on electric power only, despite the Clio Hybrid’s small 1.2 kWh battery. But, in order, to get it approved, Fremau had to present his LEGO model to the higher-ups.

“Renault has always been a very open company, especially when it comes to research,” said Fremau. “But the day I brought the model to the Gérard Detourbet and Rémi Bastien, I didn’t know how they would react. They walked around the model, they touched it and they felt that we had a real object. And I will always remember Gérard Detourbet’s remark: ‘If we can make it in LEGO, it will work!’”

From there, it only took 18 months to get the principles developed by the LEGO model into a moving car. Now, it’s on roads all over Europe.