Italian car maker Fiat has told the workforce on its electric 500 assembly line to down tools for a month due to lack of demand for the battery-powered city cars. The Mail has more.
Its parent company Stellantis said on Thursday it would suspend production of the fully electric Fiat 500e for four weeks due to sluggish demand.
The global slowdown in sales of electric vehicles, partly due to diverging policies on green incentives, has pushed car makers worldwide to adjust their EV plans, with Volvo earlier in the month abandoning its ambitions of becoming an electric-only auto maker in 2030.
“The measure is necessary due to the current lack of orders linked to the deep difficulties experienced in the European electric (car) market by all producers, particularly the European ones,” Stellantis said in a statement issued earlier in the week.
The 500 is made in Turin, the birthplace of the Fiat brand, at the historic Mirafiori plant.
The suspension of production will start on Friday, Stellantis said, adding it was “working hard to manage at its best this hard phase of transition”.
As part of these efforts, the Franco-Italian group said it is investing €100 million euros (£85 million) in the Mirafiori plant to adopt a higher performance battery.
Changes to the factory are also afoot due to the decision to produce a hybrid version of the 500 electric model, starting between 2025 and 2026 – another reactionary move to tackle a slowdown in EV demand.
When Fiat discussed the reasons behind the decision to reintroduce a petrol-hybrid powerplant – something it originally said it would not do with the intention of the new 500 being electric only – it pointed to older drivers in particular not wanting to buy battery-powered vehicles.
Worth reading in full – includes a rundown of other brands also delaying their electric transition, including Toyota, Renault and Mercedes.
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The naivete and simple wrongheadedness of the execs in charge of these manufacturers is breathtaking. A blind man could see that EVs were a busted flush from the outset. “Gizzajob!”
Since when has common sense or logic mattered in the context of net zero?
I do not understand why there are no Court cases brought by shareholders who have lost £$€¥ billions, against company directors and management for breach of fiduciary duty.
Properly conducted marketing would have reported that the lack of charging infrastructure or planning to build it, consumer preferences, competition (ICEVs), product practicality, high market entry price (even with subsidies), huge capital input with long interval before RoI realised, made BEVs high risk project likely to fail, perhaps with just a small niche market.
It is why companies have marketing departments, to avoid making costly mistakes. Either no marketing was done, or marketing reports were ignored.
I suppose there is a third possibility, company management these days is so incompetent it’s not worth spit.
I drove an all electric Fiat 500 while my ICE was in for a service. Absolutely hated it and couldn’t believe the price tag. Good enough reason not to buy it in my book and evidently others feel the same.
Electric Car Production Slumps
It makes it sound as if it had been hugely successful, then suddenly….
But surely Ed Miliband will be buying one?
In my view no private individual should be buying an electric car (EV), the costs, risks, liabilities and practical problems render them unsuitable for private ownership. And indeed, most EVs have been sold to leasing companies and are operating on a lease basis. As these leased EVs come to the end of their leasing life they are being sold off with massive depreciation. This depreciation is so huge that the lease companies are taking a big hit and lease charges for EVs are rising fast to claw back these depreciation losses.
As lease costs rise the corporate world is cutting back on leased EVs. As demand for EVs slows up the Zero Emissions Mandate kicks in and puts the brakes on how many petrol/diesel ICE) cars can be sold without incurring a hefty fine. And so, as EVs sales slow the supply of ICE cars is held back. In essence to hark back to the old ESSO advert;
”The EV sign means the end of motoring, no happy motoring,
Call at the EV sign for no more motoring”
Yes, it’s absolutely crazy. I watched a YouTube video on the subject of the Porsche GT3 RS and what was required to get on the waiting list for a shot at buying that car. Basically, Porsche told the prospective buyer that he would be required to have three (electric) Taycans first! They just can’t shift them, and by some estimates/calculations they are depreciating by as much as £1000/mth! Add to this the fact that Porsche are bringing out a newer Taycan, the old and unsold ones are less desirable than ever, a massive failure.
Do you refer to the c.£90,000 Porch Tincan, that lost the endurance race John O’Groats to Land’s End to a 15-year old 3-Series BMW diesel (that cost £1,500 to buy)?
Somebody may have to advise him that the new EV will be delivered with a 70% higher upfront “carbon footprint” which will take 50000 to 80000 miles to shed!
A whole fleet I should imagine paid for by the taxpayer.
It isn’t just electric cars this agenda is being disinvested at every level because it all slots together and makes no business sense at all on any level once public trust is lost. Nice try tossers. They did get away with an awful lot of money and power though and it will take three decades to get it back.
It’s almost as though Fiat have realised the high number of children killed and maimed daily in and down the African cobalt mines, or the toxic pollution caused by the lithium production ‘baths’, or the impossibility of safely disposing of the old expired batteries. No, of course not.
Apologies to sensitive readers, one realises this subject should not be discussed openly. Like the Bird-Slicers and Silicon Deserts appearing rapidly across our [once] fine land and coasts.
I’m not an expert but I can quickly see that the author of this article has got the wrong end of the stick.
There is no slow down in EV demand – it is still growing. ICE car production peaked before Covid and is NEVER coming back.
There is only one EV manufacturer making a profit on their cars, every one else is producing very expensive prototype EVs. Many years back the 1st Fiat 500 electric was produced for California, at a huge loss,in order that
Fiat, or Stelantis could sell their more profitable ICE cars. They actually said they hoped people wouldn’t buy them because of the loss made on each one. The situation is the same for all EV manufactures, they are still selling prototype EVs, at a huge loss. As they don’t have any compelling or competitive EVs they have found that they can’t sell the car’s
they produce. They have g8ven up on the race to beat Tesla.
But they can’t admit this.
So they are creating a story that EV demand has fallen, it was all too early, and they will concentrate on Hybrids. This is all a desperate strategy to stay in business – they know they can’t afford to make EVs at the moment so they are making rapidly dwindling profits on what they can make.
What we are witnessing is the colla0se of legacy car manufacturers.
EVs are coming, only slowed by the economic slowdown
If they are cheap enough people will buy them. Legacy auto is facing a terrible future with their decline marked by the loss of scale and bargaining power.. Stelantis and particularly Fiat are even more exposed as they refuse to pay Tesla for EV credits, on principle.
I could go on in detail, but you need a better advocate than me in this Comments Section otherwise you are just getting the narrative legacy auto wants you to believe…
The Eco Nutters seem to be learning the hard way that they can make manufacturers build EVs, but they can’t make “the peasants” buy them.
Who’d a thunk it.
I think the Soviet Union is still trying to sell its excess tractors.
I guess command economies can never work, especially as it’s usually a bunch of idealistic idiots doing the commanding.
Just a month?
EV’s are the Betamax of the automotive industry.
You can lead a horse to water………………Government are determined to stuff the medicine down our throats but the people know it is just a placebo. Just as I type this I see on GB News that someting to do with hybrids has been pushed back from 2030 to 2035. —(I will check the details soon) But expect more of this kind of thing as reality is a hard enemy to defeat.