MAP: Stellantis global EV performance as CEO departs
Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis, was due to retire at the end of his contract in early 2026, but this week the board of the Italian-American automaker abruptly showed the 66-year old the door.
Amsterdam-headquartered Stellantis owns more than a dozen brands including European marques like Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Peugeot and Citroën, along with US stalwarts like Jeep, RAM trucks and Chrysler. A year ago, Stellantis inked a joint venture partnership with Leapmotor to market and produce the Chinese EV maker’s vehicles in Europe.
The reasons behind the Tavares ouster are numerous: not paying enough attention to the US and the company’s shrinking share of the key market, foisting overpriced, uninspiring models onto angry dealership networks, and neglecting the combustion engine business to go all-in on electric cars whether trading conditions permitted it or not.
Judging by Stellantis’ EV performance alone, Tavares had been on borrowed time after overseeing an across-the-board erosion of the company’s electrification efforts.
The Adamas Intelligence EV Battery Intel Platform shows the combined battery capacity deployed by Stellantis in Q3 fell 28% year-over-year to 4.1 GWh.
It was the company’s worst quarterly performance in two years.
That places Stellantis at a lowly 20th spot by GWh deployed – down from 8th in Q3 2023 – after being overtaken by a bunch of its competitors, most notably General Motors which upped battery capacity deployment 69% year on year, Ford (+16%), and aforementioned Leapmotor (+67%).
In the process Stellantis’ share of the global EV market fell to under 2% in Q3 from over 3% last year. During the quarter, 85% of the battery capacity rolled onto roads by new buyers of Stellantis group vehicles were in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Never a large market for Stellantis to begin with, its tireprint in the Asia Pacific region plunged by 43% in Q3 and now represents less than 3% of the power hours deployed by the company. And that in a region where the overall EV market was a third larger in Q3 of this year than last year.
Another factor in the underwhelming performance of Stellantis was its inability to ride one of the biggest trends in the EV market for the past couple of years.
The Stellantis sales mix is about 70% full electric and 30% plug-in hybrid. While the global market for PHEVs is surging, vastly outpacing growth rates for BEVs, Stellantis’ PHEV business – dominated by its North American brands Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge – declined by 44% in Q3 compared to the year before.
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Image credit: Tada Images – stock.adobe.com
