Stellantis CEO talks about what the company that makes everything from Peugeot hatches to Ram pickups is doing in a period of automotive transformation

By Gary S. Vasilash

Carlos Tavares, Stellantis CEO, made some interesting comments during a session with the Automotive Press Association yesterday. In a wide-ranging interview with Joe White of Reuters, Tavares talked about subjects ranging from the chip shortage to “American e-muscle” to the lead North American brand for electrification (Jeep) to supply chain (“We have 110 models and approximately 4,000 parts per model”) to agility (“Being agile is part of our business. . . . This is an industry that is continually hit by crisis. . . .So we need to be mentally and physically agile”).

Earlier in July Tavares laid out the plans that the fourth-largest OEM on the planet has when it comes to electrification, including an investment of more than €30 billion through 2025 in electrification and software development.

The company intends to have 70% of its light-vehicle mix in Europe to be low-emissions vehicles (LEVs) by 2030 and more than 40% LEVs in the U.S. in the same period.

One of the questions, of course, is China, where Stellantis isn’t as strong as some of its competitors.

Tavares said that they will be bringing Opel to China as an all-EV brand. He noted that the vehicles will not be compact but large, explaining that German brands have a reputation in China that is not one of diminutive models, so they will take that into account.

But one of the more interesting things he said in the APA interview was something he didn’t fully articulate.

He said that they are going to be executing an “innovative business model” in China.

In May it was announced that Stellantis and Foxconn had come to a strategic agreement through which the two will be working together on electric vehicles. China is the initial market for those EVs.

Presumably there will be more to it than some sort of additional collaboration with Foxconn or other contract manufacturers.

Tavares talked about how the industry is presently in a “very transformative” period.

Odds are he’s not going to be making transformation in small bits.