The Agnelli family's sale of Iveco to Tata Motors at the end of July is an important event that deserves greater attention. First and foremost, it marks the disappearance of a European player from the Italian heavy goods vehicle industry. It is also, and above all, the continuation of a very structural trend of selling European automotive assets to non-European investors, which is easy to understand but deeply damaging.

Tata Motors announced on July 30 that it was buying the civilian part of Iveco Group's business for €3.8 billion to acquire Iveco Group.

Tata Motors, which is remembered for the relationships it forged in 2007 with Fiat, has the full support of Iveco's board of directors for this transaction, particularly from the Agnelli family, through its investment company Exor, chaired by John Elkann. For Exor and the Agnelli family, the transaction comes at the end of a long process of restructuring the intertwined holdings that once made up the Fiat empire into separate, saleable entities. read more

Le plan du 5 mars 2025 issu du dialogue stratégique de filière n’a pas décidé grand-chose d’autre que d’octroyer aux constructeurs les flexibilités qu’ils demandaient. Le reste est assez nébuleux pour ne pas dire inconsistant : des portes sont ouvertes mais toutes les mesures concrètes restent à prendre. Toutefois, ce verre à moitié vide est susceptible de se remplir si les acteurs suivent les chemins qui se dessinent derrière chaque porte ouverte. L’un de ces chemins est à tracer en allant au-delà de cette phrase figurant dans le document diffusé le 5 mars : "la Commission s'engage également à utiliser les instruments de défense commerciale et le règlement sur les subventions étrangères pour enquêter sur les pratiques déloyales en amont de la chaîne d'approvisionnement, y compris dans le segment des batteries et des pièces détachées, le cas échéant". read more

Among the many consequences of the Covid19 pandemic, confinements and supply chain disruptions, inflation is certainly the most noticeable for households. The U.S. Federal Reserve has undertaken several interest rate hikes to slow demand and curb rising prices. This Wednesday, the Federal Reserve decided to start lowering rates by half a point. The question now is how the automotive industry can benefit from this change.

From the real estate market, to company transfers, to car purchases, interest rates punctuate the lives of Americans.

For real estate, high interest rates have a double impact. Firstly, the purchase price of a home is higher because of particularly expensive loans. Secondly, the dynamics of a sluggish market lead to price stagnation, as sellers who need to find a property are faced with high price levels, limiting the potential for future buyers. At the same time, Americans benefit from a number of advantages, including the ability to refinance their home loan at regular intervals, as well as a type of mortgage to finance extensions to their home or simply to buy a car. read more

The continuing turbulence involved in negotiating the major changes underway in the automotive industry is making collective action at industry level even more difficult than usual. It is therefore tempting for manufacturers disappointed by the successive defeats of their lobby in the face of politics and environmental NGOs to go it alone, and Carlos Tavares made this choice this week, informed by the Volkswagen precedent. However, whereas Volkswagen had been discreet, Stellantis is much more explicit and is taking the risk of posing, rather awkwardly no doubt, as a direct competitor to politicians.

Carlos Tavares' decision to withdraw from the ACEA on 13 June is being interpreted as a kind of mood swing on the part of a client against its lobbying service provider, who failed to put forward Stellantis' arguments to the European Parliament. Insofar as this defeat in Brussels is part of a long sequence that began with the Volkswagen affair in the United States in autumn 2015, it is understandable that Europe's second-largest carmaker should be tempted to go it alone after having tried in vain to 'play collectively'. read more

Sur les 12 derniers mois, selon Electricity Maps, l'intensité carbone de la production d'électricité (g CO2eq/kWh) entre la France et l'Allemagne est dans un rapport de 1 à 12. France : 30 g avec 97% de bas carbone et 30% de renouvelable. Allemagne : 359 g avec 68% de bas carbone et 68% de renouvelable. A voir sur https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
Le retour en grâce de la politique industrielle dont on se gargarise ces derniers mois n’est pas seulement à associer à la question de la riposte européenne au "Made in China 2025" ou à l’IRA américain. En matière automobile, comme de manière plus générale, elle renvoie à des choix politiques clés qui sont à la fois des choix de politique intérieure et des choix diplomatiques ou géostratégiques. Ces choix particulièrement importants dans le domaine énergétiques n’ont pas été les mêmes dans les différents Etats membres de l’UE et, singulièrement, en France et en Allemagne. La question automobile pour laquelle ces différences existaient mais s’exprimaient à bas bruit est désormais tellement liée à la question énergétique que les raisons de contester la voie allemande deviennent plus claires et les alliés susceptibles d’être mobilisés pour le faire plus nombreux. read more

A major report on the issue of European automotive electrification, published online in early December, sheds new light on the matter. It shows that it is probably the mistakes made in the past that have given electrification the status it now has as the only feasible solution. It also shows that the dead ends of the past will resurface. The debate opened up at that time may lead either to questioning the Brussels choice or to seeking to reorient the conditions for its implementation.

It is not wrong to say that, as Le Point said on Friday 16 December, a form of 'self-censorship' on the part of Europe is currently weighing on the debates concerning electrification. 
It is undeniably desirable, even essential, to get out of this self-censorship in 2023 as the irremediable effects of the decisions confirmed in 2022 to move away from fossil fuels accelerate and as each European country seeks in this context to jointly manage the decline of the old sector and the rise of the new. read more

Cars are not textiles or consumer electronics and products travel more readily within a region than across the globe. For this reason, the "Chinese question" will soon cease to be the question of imports and their possible containment and become that of the assembly of Chinese vehicles in Europe. What attitude will Europe then develop? Everything converges today to cast doubt on its ability to develop a different Chinese policy from the one that is taking shape in the case of the Wuling Hongguang Mini entering Europe through the Estonian door.

At a time when we were worried about American protectionism and Emmanuel Macron was going to raise with President Biden the question of exporting European vehicles to North America, which only interests German manufacturers and the Chinese Volvo, it was announced that an electric vehicle called the FreZe Nikrob EV would be marketed in France in 2023 by the Estonian group Dartz, with a starting price of 12 or 13,000 euros, minus the bonus. read more

The announcement in the week of 14 November of a doubling of the production capacity of the Stellantis factory in Kenitra was presented, like the announcement of the construction project of the factory 7 years ago, as intended to satisfy the African and Middle Eastern needs. However, it is a reaffirmation by the group of a clear strategic course: the competition of sites, employees and states.

Continuing the discourse which has been his since the construction project of the Kenitra factory was born, the management of Stellantis presented last week its project of doubling the assembly capacity of the factory as being intended to allow the company to hold a leading position in the expansion of the African and Middle Eastern markets.

The Moroccan partners are trying not to interfere too much with this communication strategy but are more explicit about the real ambition of the project by putting forward the main economic virtue that this investment will have, beyond the jobs created directly and indirectly: exports. Thus, the Minister for Industry and Foreign Trade, Ryad Mezzour, was pleased in May with the growing automobile surplus recorded. He stated: 'In terms of volume, Morocco is the leading exporter of cars to the European Union ahead of China, Korea, Japan, Turkey... The best-selling car in Europe is made in Morocco. read more