Tavares neither surprised nor shocked
“We are neither surprised nor shocked by the decision” taken by the 27 members of the EU. “We are organized to deal with it. They decide, we execute,” he added.
“The choice of electrification” of the car fleet “is a political choice and not an industrial one, we comply with the decision”, continued Carlos Tavares.
The Stellantis plant in Moselle is already in the conversion phase
The Stellantis factory in Trémery, in Moselle, for a long time the largest diesel engine site in the world, has already begun its conversion to electric. Currently, 1,400 electric motors leave the first two production lines dedicated to this type of motorization every day. Around 3,850 diesel engines and 1,250 petrol engines are also manufactured on the site daily.
Stellantis will accelerate Trémery’s mutation
Stellantis will accelerate the transformation of its Trémery plant (Moselle): the automotive group thus plans that 50% of the engines that will leave the site in 2024 will be electric.
Even announcing that they want to produce 100% electric vehicles by 2030.
Unions are concerned about a social breakdown on an unprecedented scale
FO, the builder’s first union, worried on Wednesday about a decision that would cause “social damage on an unprecedented scale” for the sector. Which is already proving to be heavily impacted by the health crisis and the shortage of semiconductors.
In a press release, the union organization calls on the government to convene a “+ auto summit + to lay the foundations for a historic industrial and social transition”, and guarantee the sustainability of the factories.
“The end of thermal engines, and that of hybrids, could ultimately eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs (…) while the electrification of production will create barely 70,000. The calculation is as simple as ‘scary’, emphasizes FO.
The ban on heat engines has yet to cross the caudine forks of the Euro MPs
Whether the ban on the sale of new cars fitted with internal combustion engines has certainly been approved by the 27, after being proposed by the European executive in July 2021, everything is not over yet. The project that would make life beautiful for electric cars must still be discussed before MEPs. The car lobbies will not hesitate to act by then to try to stop a race for electric shallots.
A ban intended in particular to meet Europe’s climate objectives
The fact remains that beyond the industrial aspect, such a decision has the particular objective of enabling the European continent to achieve its climate objectives. The aim is particularly to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
If the car is certainly the primary means of transport for Europeans, it represents a little less than 15% of total CO2 emissions in the EU, one of the primary gases responsible for global warming.
Development of charging stations: urgent need to catch up
While manufacturers are worried about insufficient consumer demand for 100% electric, the Commission has also recommended strongly developing charging stations. The problem of the lack of autonomy remains a major obstacle to the growth of EV sales. Manufacturers would not like to be forced to produce and market vehicles that cannot find buyers…
For Carlos Tavares, “the infrastructure is behind the number of cars we sell”. “A consumer will not buy an electric vehicle until they are convinced that they can easily charge it,” he stressed. “We are in the process of increasing the autonomy of our vehicles, the technology is progressing quickly: however, we must be able to charge the cars”, he added.
Our opinion, by leblogauto.com
Such a speech reveals a thinly veiled disagreement on the merits of such a decision. If he had been frankly for it, Carlos Tavares would have shouted it loud and clear. Here, on the contrary, he wishes to note that this is an agreement which is intended above all to be political – to relaunch the economy by “renewing the fleet” while showing itself to be environmentally compatible – and not industrial.
Source: AFP
to summarize
While the 27 member states of the European Union on Wednesday approved the plan to ban the sale of cars with thermal engines from 2035, Carlos Tavares, the CEO of Stellantis said that such a decision did not surprise him. not. But he considers that it is above all guided by political and not industrial objectives.
