The situation in Europe is so desperate that a 5.2 percent drop of French car sales in April gave reason to rejoice. “The plunge seems to be halting after the double-digit declines of previous months,” Francois Roudier, spokesman of the French CCFA industry association, told Reuters. Read More >
Folks who are not intimately familiar with the peculiarities of the European auto industry often call Renault a similar basket case as its French rival Peugeot. January through March, both are down in Europe, PSA (-15.3 percent) more than Renault (-8.3 percent), but the big difference is that Renault has a much wider international footprint. What’s more, Renault owns 44.3 percent of Nissan. This international footprint helps Renault solve problems in ways Peugeot can’t touch. For instance, by making Nissans. Read More >
The French government is planning on raising taxes on diesel fuel, branding it a “health issue”, much to the chagrin of consumers and the country’s auto industry.
Prevailing wisdom today holds that small cars, manufactured in developed economies are some of the least profitable cars in existence. So why do companies like Peugeot, Citroen and Renault persist in producing them?
After approving a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for PSA’s captive finance arm, the European Commission demanded a restructuring plan for all of PSA within six months.
The French government is denying that it plans to acquire a stake in PSA, but France’s Prime Minister told reporters that mechanisms for providing government assistance have already been vetted.
If GM wants to know what will happen when things get tough at its Opel plants, all it has to do is ask partner PSA. Workers at PSA’s doomed Aulnay plant “face jeers and threats, as well as eggs and other objects hurled by striking colleagues protesting against the shutdown and Peugeot’s restructuring plans,” as Reuters reports from the frontlines. Read More >
Looking at Renault’s European sales, one sees red. Looking at Renault’s stock chart, one sees the best valuations in the last two years, and a trend that is going up. What does the market know we don’t?
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If anyone is hoping for a turn-around of the European car market, be it Opel, PSA, or Pch101, January definitely was not the month it happened. Some people, who get paid a lot of money for a very long-term vision, believe we have to wait years for the turn-around. The French car market dropped 15 percent in January, with “Volkswagen and U.S. carmakers leading the drop,” Reuters reports. Massive sales subsidies of 2,000 euros ($2,700) per car, reintroduced in October in Spain, could not reverse the Spanish market. It dropped 9.6 percent. Read More >
GM’s tattered alliance-partner PSA Peugeot Citroen did not produce any cars in its Slovak plant today and will add more stoppage days next month to catch up with weak demand in Europe, Reuters reports. Read More >
We at TTAC are very excited by modular platforms, and it has nothing to do with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorders or a lack of interest in the wider world outside autos. Modular platforms are the next great leap forward for auto makers; green cars help save cute animals, and thus get all the attention, but guess what underpins the Nissan Leaf? A version of Renault-Nissan’s B Platform, which underpins everything from the Cube to the Clio to the Sandero.
The French government is asking the EU Commission to approve its bail-out of GM’s alliance partner PSA Peugeot Citroen, Reuters says with input from French daily Les Echos. Read More >
What a sexy bride! A year ago, GM acquired seven percent in moribund PSA. A year later, PSA announces truly horrific results. PSA’s global car sales dropped 16.5 percent for the year. Its market share in Europe is down 0.5 points to 12.7 percent. There is a big black hole where there used to be a profitable Iran business. Read More >
The French government is pushing PSA Peugeot Citroen to buy Opel, says Le Monde, which claims to have its information from sources at the French Finance Ministry and in the entourage of France’s President Francois Hollande. Buying moribund Opel would allow PSA to stand up to “ogre Volkswagen” which “has chosen to eliminate PSA,” as an informant told the Paris paper.
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We did not believe that EU regulators would let France’s government bailout of GM’s alliance partner PSA skate through unchallenged. State aid to companies is against EU rules, and refinancing of Banque PSA Finance is state aid EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia wrote in a letter to the French government. This according to a report in the French daily Les Echos. Read More >
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