Who says better? One million cars in Italy, one million in France. On both sides of the Alps, governments are pressuring Stellantis for the manufacturer to relaunch its factories at full speed, symbols of reindustrialization. With different fortunes.
Years of relocation, in particular to Spain, Eastern Europe and the Maghreb, have caused the local production of the fourth world manufacturer, born in 2021 from the merger of Fiat-Chrysler and Peugeot-Citroën, to fall in these two national cradles. The slowdown in the auto market with the Covid pandemic and the shortage of electronic parts has not helped.
“It is clear that both France and Italy want to help us, described the head of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, on July 5. But the mood occasionally goes from outright support to pretty strong pressure.”
Visiting Rome on Monday, Carlos Tavares pledged to produce more cars in Italian factories, with the ultimate goal of making “one million vehicles” a year in the country of the Fiat 500.
“Locate more models in Italian factories”
“Our intention is clearly to locate more models in Italian factories,” starting with the one in Melfi in the south of the country, he said after an interview in Rome with Italian Business Minister Adolfo Urso. Carlos Tavares has thus announced his intention to “produce a fifth model in addition to the four already announced” for this southern location, “subject to an improvement in performance”.
The French-Italian-American manufacturer and Rome “shared the need to immediately reverse the negative trend in the production of “cars” of the last twenty years” in Italy, Adolfo Urso said in a press release. The ultra-conservative government of Giorgia Meloni has made the defense of the national industry its workhorse.
The two parties have set up a working group “to reach a transition agreement by the end of the month” within the framework of a “new European industrial policy that must protect production and employment”, he continued. Stellantis produced just 685,753 vehicles in Italy last year. As a symbol, the last two models presented by Fiat, the small SUV 600e and the Topolino, a car without a license plate, will be manufactured respectively in Poland and Morocco.
Twelve electric models in France
Adolfo Urso’s initiative echoes that of French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, who on Wednesday called on Stellantis to show “patriotism” by repatriating production of small electric vehicles, such as the Peugeot 208, to France.
At the Paris motor show in October 2022, Carlos Tavares promised French President Emmanuel Macron that he would continue to invest in his French factories, producing 12 electric models there, including the electric Peugeot 308, 3008 and 408. The French government also shows the relocation of car production as one of its priorities: Emmanuel Macron has promised that France will once again produce two million vehicles in 2030, compared to 1.3 million in 2022.
If Stellantis’ French factories produced 678,400 cars in 2022, as many as in Italy, Stellantis also aims to reach “more than a million vehicles and components”, such as platforms, by 2024 in France.
No Peugeot 208 produced in France
But the small electric 208, number 1 in its segment in Europe with close to 50,000 units sold in 2022, will soon be manufactured at the Zaragoza plant in Spain. The Minister of Economy would like it to be produced in France, like its future competitor, the Renault 5.
In France as in Italy, Stellantis dialogues with the government under the gaze of the employees, whose workforce has melted with the merger. But it is not possible to build a profitable small car in a high-cost country, Carlos Tavares tirelessly repeats.
“We are at a critical moment in which we must protect the accessibility of the middle classes to the automobile and digest a technology (electric) that is 40% more expensive,” argued the leader.
Carlos Tavares talks about the differences in production costs that are very favorable to Eastern European countries, but also about the new competition from Chinese electricity companies and their goal of maintaining a double-digit margin, never seen in the two groups before their merger.
Source: BFM TV
