In 2010, when everybody was going ecstatic about EVs, PSA Peugeot Citroen said to Mitsubishi: “send us some of your i-Mievs, with our badges. Say, 100,000 for starters.”
PSA sold them (as much as they could) as the Peugeot iOn and Citroen C-Zero, the first car that sounds like sugar-free soda-pop. Now, PSA picked up the phone, called Japan, and said: “Hold the i-Mievs! We have enough!” (Read More…)
France is asking the EU to look into an uptick in South Korean car imports, which could possibly result in tarrifs being slapped on the vehicles, despite an EU-South Korean free trade agreement.
When GM bought seven percent of the moribund PSA Peugeot Citroen five months ago, the happy couple praised monstrous synergies and annual cost savings of $2 billion a year coming from the – ahem – tie-up. Hope springs eternal, but currently, the value of this dubious investment is deflating faster than a popped balloon. Even GM is realizing it and tells the Treasury that it may have to write down that investment if things don’t get better soon.
The ever so vigilant Reuters actually went to the trouble of reading the complete 10-Q GM filed with the SEC in connection with GM’s recent quarterly report. In that filing, GM says: (Read More…)
And now, back to the usual blood and tears from Europe: July new cars sales dropped 7 percent in France and thudded 17 percent in Spain “as consumers cut back on costly goods in the face of economic uncertainty,” says Reuters. (Read More…)
If you look at half year sales in Europe, then you see Renault as the worst performer of the volume makers. With EU sales down 17.09 percent, the Renault Group took a bigger hit than European patients Opel (- 15 percent) and PSA (-13.9 percent). Even troubled Fiat was doing better than Renault, by a hair (-17.08 percent for Fiat.) Whereas the percentages carry the smell of death, Renault’s half year results smell downright rosy. (Read More…)
Europe’s second-largest car maker and GM alliance partner PSA Peugeot Citroen ended the first half of the year with its auto division 662 million euro ($800 million) in the reds, Reuters says. (Read More…)
PSA Peugeot Citroen’s Chairman Thierry Peugeot lashed out against what he calls “evil attacks” by the new leftist French government and its industry minister Arnaud Montebourg. He also raised a specter that makes any patriotic politician sit up and listen: Hostile takeovers. (Read More…)
The Peugeot family is on war footing with the French government. It “hit back at suggestions by a government official that its members have favored their own financial interests over the development of the family-controlled auto maker,” says the Wall Street Journal. Basically, the family followed the line of argument suggested by TTAC. (Read More…)
The Peugeot family will receive an invitation from French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg, but not for tea and cookies.
The minister “plans to summon members of the Peugeot family to explain why the car maker had continued to pay dividends even as it was facing mounting difficulties,” Reuters says. (Read More…)
The establishment of a new manufacturing base in North Africa has fascinated me for the past couple months – though few others seem to really care. The leader in this movement has been Renault, which is setting up plants in Morocco and Algeria to build their popular, low-cost Dacia vehicles in factories where employees earn a fraction of what a French assembly line worker would make.
PSA doesn’t have a low-cost brand of it’s own, so jobs haven’t gone across the Strait of Gibraltar – yet. But the closing of the Aulnay plant, where a massive contingent of North African immigrants (now French citizens) work, is a compelling snapshot of the socioeconomic and racial dynamics of France that happens to intersect with the auto industry.
Newly elected French socialist President Francois Hollande told GM’s partner PSA Peugeot Citroen to renegotiate a plan to lay off 8,000 workers. However, Hollande admitted he could not halt Peugeot. Hollande promised government money to “encourage consumers to purchase French-made, environmentally friendly cars,” Reuters reports. Soon he will admit he cannot do that either. The “French made” part is sure to get his government in trouble with the EU. (Read More…)
It’s been a long time coming, but PSA has finally done it; the parent company of Peugeot and Citroen is cutting 8,000 jobs and closing an assembly plant outside Paris, as the carmaker tries to cope with a sagging market and excess capacity.
GM got itself a great new partner. Global sales of PSA Peugeot Citroen, the besieged company that is now 7 percent owned by the General, dropped 13 percent, Reuters says. PSA’s European sales dropped 15 percent, which illustrates how much PSA’s ill fortunes are tied to those of Europe. (Read More…)
Bloomberg is reporting that Peugeot may expand their job cuts in France, with the potential for 10 percent of their domestic warehouse to be cut.
What car does Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi a.k.a. His Serene Highness Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco drive? He drives a Prius.
Today, he switched it for a plug-in hybrid Prius. The minute the first plug-ion hybrid was available in Europe, Toyota shipped it to Monaco as a two month loaner. (Read More…)
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