At the Paris motor show the manufacturers’ front is split: Stellantis asks for incentives, BMW and Renault ask for changes to the rules. De Meo offers a new category of low-cost city cars
Gianluigi Giannetti
October 16 – 09:29 – PARIS
A surreal sceneTogether thrilling e disheartening. It is useless to hide behind the large turnout in the first hours of opening to the public, never so numerous in an exhibition of this type since the distant Geneva Motor Show in 2019. The Paris motor show is traditionally staged in the pavilions of the Parc Expo in Porte de Versailles, a crowded area south-west of the centre, but the hottest discussions have taken the road to the countryside, on a very controversial 320 km journey towards the north-east, Belgium and Bruxelles. That is, while the crowd and the smell of cheese sandwiches surround the few cars that will not be difficult to sell, in the rooms reserved for professionals a real process to the community institutionsto the regulations on reduction of CO2 emissions as early as 2025, to the lack of a coordinated European policy that supports the electric caras well as imposing it as mandatory from 2035, barring surprises. For the first time in years, unofficial statements become contemptuous. Those public and rituals, equally heavy: “In Brussels it’s time to move!”.
Stellantis against everyone
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Now there is no way to avoid the nervousness clearly transpiresthat the showdown also becomes an opportunity for glaring disagreement between managers. The show staged at theAutomotive Summit 2024a collateral event at the motor show which saw the CEO of Renault as guests Luca de Meofollowed on stage by Oliver ZipseCEO of the BMW Group, in evident harmony on questioning European constraints and rules. Also invited Carlos Tavaresnumber one of Stellantis, who spoke to the public two hours later expressing diametrically opposed positionsleaving no room for possible negotiations or replies. “We are accumulating rules and fines, while the United States they heavily stimulate their industry and the China implements aid worth 230 billion dollars” this is the premise from which he starts Luca de Meo in his speech. “Alone playing as a team European industry has a chance to regain the upper hand, and public authorities can orchestrate it all by promoting restructuring of the car ecosystem“. The Renault CEO speaks too clearly: “An urgent review is needed. The rules on the new Co2 emission limits could lead to 16 billion euros in fines to the builders”. Elegant but caustic, de Meo follows Oliver Zipse: “If climate objectives are accompanied by a plan to achieve them, only then will decarbonisation truly be an opportunity for everyone, but this plan does not exist now. We need one revision of the regulations as early as 2025“. The CEO of BMW also makes it a question of method, invoking that technological neutrality who does not see the electric car as the only solution at all: “We need a policy that creates framework conditions for progress, instead of placing obstacles to existing successful technologies.” The location of Carlos Tavares? Garlic antipodes: “Regulations seem to be back in discussion in Europe, but now is not the time to hesitate. The debate is overstability is needed. Electric cars are superior products. The transition must intervene on their highest price with purchase incentives“.
The ultra-city car front
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With the background noise of the crowd munching on cheese sandwiches, The Paris Salon puts on the scene yet another contrast precisely on the topic of maximum possible cost-effectiveness of the electric car. During a meeting with the Italian press, Carlos Tavares dedicates himself to a surprising phrase: “La Mickey Mouse it’s there more efficient resource to move around the city, the electric one is more suitable for small urban journeys”. Again, CEO Stellantis takes a road that appears lonely compared to the movements that are being considered in the European automotive industry. In fact, one comes from Luca de Meo concrete proposal to relaunch the small city car marketin a new wave of mass motorization which could act as a driving force for battery-powered cars: “We should instead create a new category, or differentiate the regulation between large and small carshow it was done in Japan with Keicars. We must not compromise on safety, but the rules should be adapted to the conditions of use of this type of vehicle. What’s the point of doing a crash test at 56 km/h when the limit in urban areas is 50 km/h?”. The Renault CEO thinks of a collaboration between multiple automotive groups Europeans for shake the question from below of battery-powered cars working very decisively on costs: “The first thing to do is to return to using small cars, which in the case of electric ones allow the use of a more compact battery. And which potentially allows us to make electric cars that cost less than combustion ones.” The idea is that of a consortium of builders: “It wouldn’t even be the first time: when I was at Toyota we did a project with PSA to produce the Aygo, the Citroën C1 and the Peugeot 107. It doesn’t take a Nobel in physics to understand that to move an object that weighs a ton it takes half the energy, whatever it is, of that used for an object that weighs two”.
