Vauxhall owner Stellantis’s sales have plunged by more than a quarter amid production issues and an electric vehicle slowdown in Europe. The Telegraph has the story.
Stellantis, which also owns Citroen, Fiat and Peugeot, said revenues slumped from €45.1bn (£37.7bn) to €33bn (£27.6bn) in the third quarter of 2024.
The number of vehicles shipped by the company fell from 1.5 million to 1.3 million over the period.
Bosses have blamed delayed model launches and tough competition in Europe, as well as lower numbers of cars shipped to the U.S. – where the company is seeking to shift a surplus of vehicles that have piled up in sales lots.
In Europe, Stellantis and other car makers have complained about tough new regulations aimed at boosting take-up of EVs, even as inflation has battered households and led to softer demand for the cars.
Sales in Europe dropped from €14.1bn (£11.8bn) to €12.5bn (£10.5bn) in the third quarter, while vehicle shipments fell from 599 million to 496 million.
Stellantis and its European peers face what many analysts see as an existential struggle with Chinese electric car manufacturers for control of the passenger vehicle mass market.
This has prompted Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest car maker, to propose huge workforce cuts and the closure of German factories for the first time, partly in an effort to plough more investment into EV development.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Did their management not see this coming?
And what are the shareholders doing? It is they who carry the loss.
“You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”
I suspect that whilst some key players were well aware of what they were starting, for many of our gullible and not so bright politicians the collapse of the motor industry and the huge effect this will have on our economy may well come as quite a shock to them. However. like an avalanche gathering pace down the mountain, it will be hard to reverse this catastrophe.
In the UK, net-zero and the demonisation of petrol and diesel (ICE) cars is so entrenched that certainly for the UK we seem to be doomed for a huge economic impact as the motor industry rapidly falls apart. EVs are not really suited to private ownership and I do not think there will ever be a secondhand market for EVs the way we currently have for ICE cars. The risks, depreciation, software issues, charging problems, insurance costs and repair costs mean that whilst I am OK to drive an EV, I would not want to take on the responsibility of owning one.
Consequently this is all falling apart, probably far quicker than many of our politicians thought possible, some of them may well now be alarmed at what they have started but it is now too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
I largely agree with these comments excepting the final para. The situation can be reversed but would initially require a wholesale clear out of the H of C and replacement with people who are wholly against Agenda 2030. Currently nobody in parliament even mentions Agenda 2030 so expecting Reform to fill the breach is the equivalent to day dreaming. Too many people have not yet woken up and unless wake up occurs PDQ we are finished. 2030 will arrive, millions will be dead or dying and what’s left will be enslaved.
You will own nothing and be utterly, utterly miserable.
This article best sums up the current state…
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-reality-of-starmers-world-diversity-is-weakness/
“Since the purported pandemic we have seen an authoritarian turn in hitherto liberal democracies. Government is consolidating itself as technocratic totalitarianism, in pursuit of a two-tier, master-and-servant society. This is a long-term project that in my view has accelerated recently, partly because the powers-that-be know that ordinary people are awakening to the dystopian design, like the proverbial frog in boiling water.
Although awareness is spreading, the majority of citizens still believe in the fundamental premises of the state and its institutions. Mainstream media are used to present policies and mandates as beneficial and progressive; for example, road tolls and barriers are to clean the air; cameras are for our safety; ‘drag queen story hour’ teaches kids to be kind, and assisted dying will ease suffering. Anyone dissenting on the real purpose of such developments is decried as a conspiracy theorist.
Vast amounts of public money are spent on causes that few people specifically supported when casting their ballot. Writing in The Light paper, David Kurten itemised the annual largesse: £10billion on Net Zero, £3billion on arms to Ukraine, £6billion on migrant hotels, £7billion on foreign aid and £6billion on the HS2 rail folly. That makes the projected £1.5billion saving from the winter heating allowance for the elderly a drop in the ocean. Yet the enormous misappropriation of taxpayers’ money is dwarfed by the £18trillion claimed by race grifters for slavery reparations.”
Agree with Hux, the EV/ICE situation COULD be reversed, quite quickly, but I am beginning to doubt if it WILL be. Maybe our best hope is to watch someone like Germany really screw things up quickly, and then somehow use that as an excuse to change course.
No government has admitted that their handling of Covid was a disaster from beginning to end….even harder for them to admit to a current mainstay policy [Net Zero] being wrong. In that sense, it didn’t matter who won the last GE in the UK, the Uniparties were all [bar Reform] pro Net Zero
Nailed it.
They’ll never admit to anything…
Well the farmers have had a dose of cold hard reality, not quite as explicit as what the Dutch farmers were subject to but it all helps wake up the masses.
It’s still invisible, and will be, until there’s food shortages.
We actually need power cuts now or some other very visible representation to focus peoples minds – thinking back to the 70’s, electricity cuts due to coal strikes etc caused huge turmoil… and we had a far less interconnected society
Don’t worry!
They are coming. We only need some calm, very cold days, and Winter is approaching.
So few understand anything that used to be common knowledge among anyone studying Maths, Physics and Chemistry A’ levels in the 1960s. Even those with some of these qualifications, today, cannot get into their heads that those concepts and laws still apply, so heaven help us tolerate the Arts and Humanities graduates! They don’t even understand that while they were studying the Romans, or Ancient Greeks, many STEM undergraduates were coming to terms with the Physical World, and how to ‘survive the Elements’, all 92+ of them.
Not only does the H of C need ‘refreshing’, the 2008 Climate Change Act and it’s supporting legislation needs to be repealed, and the change accepted. Until then, we are fighting the Establishment and the Law of the Land, and Hell to the Laws of Physics.
I don’t disagree with your contempt for Arts and Humanities graduates but we are not all bad.
Oh dear.
What a pity.
Never mind …
VW is not closing factories and shifting production to cheaper countries than Germany to waste more money on battery cars but to avoid going bankrupt.
There is good news for Ford though as they have cut the loss on every battery car they sell by half to just $50,000!!
Good. Serves these Establishment cronies right. More please.
They can stop people buying new petrol/diesel cars, but they can’t make them buy an EV.
Just say NO and make them decide whether to destroy the European car manufacturers. I rather think the German Government will balk at the deliberate destruction of VW, Mercedes and BMW.