Posted on 28 Nov 2022
Stellantis, the merged company of Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and Groupe PSA, is considering selling low-cost Indian-made battery electric vehicles (BEV) in Europe due to the high costs of producing this type of car in Europe.
During his trip to India this week and his visit to Stellantis’ Thiruvallur plant in Chennai, ceo Carlos Tavares told the local press at a media meeting in the city that the main issue, particularly for EU-made BEVs, remains the price tag and the industry will not be able to scale up output if these types of vehicles remain a prerogative of the wealthiest. The Fiat brand, already present in India before the creation of Stellantis, is therefore looking into the possibility of importing affordable Indian BEVs into Europe to assure the mobility energy transition at affordable prices, Kallanish understands. Fiat is a partner of Tata Motors at the Ranjangaon facility in Pune, where it produces the Jeep for the Indian market together with other Tata Motors models.
Reuters reported Tavares saying: "So far, Europe is unable to make affordable EVs. So the big opportunity for India would be to be able to sell EV compact cars at an affordable price, protecting profitability."
Thanks to India’s low-cost automotive sector, Stellantis already plans to export BEVs from its Indian facilities to other Asian countries.
In the third quarter of this year, Stellantis’ global battery electric vehicles (BEV) sales increased by a staggering 41% compared to the same period in 2021. The automaker has built a wide partnership network with more than 160 co-funded projects and over 1,000 partners worldwide to boost its zero-emission mobility. It has injected over €5 billion ($5.2 billion) over the past four years into the electrification and upgrading of its Italian and French plants. In Italy, it is building a BEV hub at Fiat’s historic Italian plant of Mirafiori in Turin. The hub, called Stellantis Turin Manufacturing District, will reunite Maserati and the electric Fiat 500 production together with the entire range of Fiat electric motors (see Kallanish passim).
Last year, in a video presentation and Q&A sent to Kallanish, Tavares questioned the affordability of electric vehicles for end-users and called for the government to facilitate the transition. By 2030 electric car sales in Europe will represent more the 35% of new vehicle registrations, he said.
“We have the technology, we have the manufacturing capabilities, but can we ensure at the end of the day that that mobility is affordable enough for the purchasing power of citizens? Electrification as you know is a significant cost increase so either the companies (carmakers) put themselves in trouble because they reduce their margins to keep affordability, or they increase their pricing to protect their margins with the result that part of their customer basis will disconnect. Electrification is not leading today to something which is highly affordable for the middle classes of society," he concluded (see Kallanish 3 February 2021).
Source:Kallanish
