+++ FIAT CHRYSLER could be acquired by a Chinese car maker, with reports indicating it has already rejected one offer for no reason other than the size of the offer. A large Chinese automaker recently had a bid for the Fiat Chrysler (FCA) turned down. The Chinese bid was was reportedly rejected as it valued FCA at only a small premium over the Italian-American car maker’s sharemarket value. Before news of this bid leaked out, FCA was trading at 11.61 dollar, meaning the company had a valuation of 17.8 billion dollar. Fiat Chrysler’s price has since shot up 8.5 percent to around 12.60 dollar. A number of Chinese automakers have been doing the sums, and meeting dealers and FCA executives, sources have told. It’s not entirely clear which automaker put a bid in, and which ones are sniffing around, but names mentioned include Dongfeng, Geely, Great Wall, and Guangzhou Automobile Group, FCA’s current joint venture manufacturing partner in China. Dongfeng, already has a sizeable stake in the PSA Group, owner of the Peugeot, Citroen, and DS, and now Opel and Vauxhall too. If a Chinese car maker is successful in a bid to buy Fiat Chrysler, it would gain instant access to the important European and American markets, as well as significant presence in Brazil and Latin America. Although Chinese car makers have dipped their toes into the European market, and exhibited at motor shows in the US, they have yet to make any significant inroads in developed countries. To date, the most prominent and successful automotive takeover by a Chinese car maker has been Geely’s purchase of Volvo Cars from Ford in 2010. The Chinese government has reportedly sanctioned its automakers to go out and seek other overseas acquisitions. Currently Fiat Chrysler markets cars under 8 different brands, with the European part of company housing Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia, and Maserati, and the American wing responsible for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram. Alfa Romeo and Maserati will be spun off into their own company to be controlled by the Agnelli family, which at present has a controlling interest in Fiat Chrysler via its 30 percent shareholding. The move is said to be similar to how Fiat Chrysler divested itself of Ferrari in 2015. In that situation, 10 percent of Ferrari was listed on the New York stock exchange, with the remainder of the company distributed among FCA’s shareholders, with the Agnelli and Ferrari gaining preferred stock to retain control of the sports car maker. Fiat Chrysler effectively put a ‘For Sale’ sign on its front lawn in 2015 when its boss, Sergio Marchionne, began actively courting a merger with GM, although these overtures were publicly rebuffed by the larger automaker. In 2016, the company axed its slow-selling Dodge Dart and Chrysler 200 sedans, leaving the company’s American range devoid of any small or medium sedans. With the company’s mass market focus firmly fixed on the Jeep and Ram brands, many believed the company was making itself a more attractive takeover target. The company also began aggressively tackling its debt problem, and Marchionne has recently floated the idea of selling off some of the company’s subsidiaries, including the parts maker Magneti Marelli, casting company Teksid, and industrial automation specialist Comau. +++
+++ HYUNDAI has revealed that it plans to cut the product design cycles in half for its namesake brand and its Genesis luxury division. The move is meant to help the automaker keep its products fresh and respond quickly to changing trends and newcomers to the auto industry like Tesla, Waymo and startups with financial backing from China. Luc Donckerwolke, Hyundai and Genesis senior vice president of design, and former Bentley designer says that the automaker wants to cut the time from sketches to production from 3 years to 1.5 years. Donckerwolke revealed that it’s possible to cut the design process in half partly thanks to the opening of a new design studio within Hyundai Motor Group’s Namyang facility. The new design studio will be responsible for 65 projects between Hyundai and Genesis, and will be able to work on 25 of them at the same time. However, designers for all the 2 brands will be separated to keep them from influencing each other. Donckerwolke also points out that his design team can cut a car’s design cycle by 30 percent. Sister brand Kia also has its own design studios within the Namyang R&D center. Lee SangYup, another former Bentley designer who recently joined Hyundai, states that the automakers needs to streamline its design process to speed things up. He also told that both brands are committed to “leading by design”. The Kona is the first vehicle to feature Hyundai’s new design language. At Genesis, the G70 sedan will be the first vehicle to feature its new identity when it debuts in September. It will be followed by a redesigned G80, which is expected before 2020. +++
+++ Loved-up Peugeot and OPEL have finally done the decent thing and consummated their marriage. There’s no doubt that the former is the stronger and more secure partner. But their respective siblings, Citroen and DS on one side, Vauxhall on the other, apparently gave it their blessing, so all five can now look to work together as one big happy family. But the harsh truth is that they have too many factories, design centres and offices in too many countries. It’s inevitable that the PSA Group will close some. Remember Ryton (Peugeot), Longbridge (Rover) and Dagenham (Ford)? They were entirely or largely murdered as car-building venues. Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port and Luton factories are safe for now, but they’re bound to come under scrutiny in the early 2020s. Their workers must continue to prove they’re at least as talented, hard-working and as cheap as their new colleagues. Another issue is that the colossal Peugeot, Citroen, DS, Opel, Vauxhall clan occupies a narrow window in terms of product diversity, price and appeal. There’s an awful lot of modest, small to medium family cars that clash with each other. At the very least the group needs a mid-market mainstay marque (Peugeot) and a premium contender (DS, potentially). Citroën could become the youthfull brand (like Seat). That leaves Opel to find its own niche. Why not? Jaguar thrived when it finally shook off Ford; Opel might do the same now that it’s escaped from General Motors. Speaking of GM, it let Saab and Daewoo sink in recent years; at least it sold on Opel and Vauxhall. Dongfeng, the Chinese part owner of the PSA Group, got a bargain at around 2,2 billion euro. This is further proof that the Chinese have a great and diverse motor industry future and the Americans less so. Who’d have thought it? Communist China: champion of the capitalist car world. +++
+++ The arrival of the 3008 in showrooms this month marks the relaunch of the Peugeot brand in Australia and the start of a long climb back to a competitive position in the marketplace for PSA ’s struggling French brands, which include Citroen and its premium DS offshoot. The 2 brands, Peugeot and Citroen, are currently at their lowest point for almost 2 decades, the sales of each brand down 48 percent to the end of July after posting their worst annual result last year (with 3.129 and 965 sales respectively) since the turn of the century. Both brands have been on a downward trajectory for the past 10 years, with Peugeot falling every year since 2007 when the brand, which has been operating here nationally since 1949, posted its best-ever annual total of 8.807 new-vehicle registrations. Citroen also peaked in 2007 at 3.803 sales, and while posting a few positive returns over the same period, it has never managed to repeat the effort in the subsequent year nor move back beyond about 1.700 annual units. Independent distributors for both brands have come and gone, and now with the new era underway there were no bold assertions emanating from the 3008 launch last week about a rapid return to combined sales of more than 12/000 units; more a quiet confidence that the French galleon would, at long last, begin to turn around. The all-new 7-seat 5008 due around the end of the year will help Peugeot’s cause, while the updated 308 (the brand’s biggest-selling model by a countrymile, accounting for 40 per cent of all sales (464 so far this year and 1.237 in 2016) )will play a crucial role in the turnaround when it arrives in October. Less significant, but still with the task of generating incremental sales volume, will be the redesigned 508 range due later in 2018. At Citroen, the new-generation C3 will come back to the Australian market in October after pulling out the previous model in 2015. Next year the C3 Aircross will be added to the line-up. The slow-selling C4 Cactus continues (46 salesthis year, 226 in 2016), as does the C4 Grand Picasso (48 / 126), but the regular C4 Picasso has been removed from the line-up after managing only 27 sales to the end of July and 77 last year. There are also no DS-branded cars (DS3, DS4, DS5) in active service for at least another year, nor the regular Citroen C4 or C5, which leaves only the Berlingo to continue as the lynchpin of the entire double-chevron brand; a role assumed only since the downfall of others and with just half the number of sales it was accumulating a decade ago (133 sales so far this year and 315 om 2016). A redesigned Berlingo is due in about a year. The numbers presented here make it abundantly clear how much work lies ahead of the new management team if Peugeot and Citroen are to return to the heights seen in 2007, when a single model (the 307) accounted for 4.500 sales and received solid support of more than 2.000 units from the 207 and almost 1.500 from the 407. This was a range that covered the key passenger car segments (SUVs were a notable exception) and found success with a premium but value-oriented mix that traded on the badge, heritage, styling, dynamics and diesel powertrain options (accounting for 52 percent of sales at the time). Sporting and niche convertible model variants also boosted Peugeot’s sales and appeal, while its entire dealer network had been put through the global ‘blue box’ visual identity program. Citroen’s importer, too, had plenty of reason to be optimistic at the time with more than 1.500 sales of the C4 and useful contributions from the minor players: C2 (200), C3 (700), C5 (400), C4 Grand Picasso (300) and, of course, Berlingo (600-plus). A decade on, the 2 French brands at least now have a presence in fast-growing SUV segments and clearly still have support from loyal customers of core models such as 308. But the competition is intense, many of the mass-market brands have pushed into the premium end of the market and bona fide prestige marques are also now hunting in Peugeot and Citroen heartland. Renault was only half a dozen years into its market resurrection when the PSA brands were at their peak, and still had a way to go before achieving solid annual sales growth, but (outside of Volkswagen) is now the ‘mainstream’ European brand of choice, and the number-one French brand, with more than 11,000 sales in each of the past 2 years. From its full-scale relaunch in 2001, Renault took 13 years to reach 10,000 annual sales in Australia. We can really only imagine how long it will take for Peugeot, and perhaps Citroen, to reach that mark. +++
+++ SELF DRIVING vehicles have the potential to reshape a wide range of occupations held by roughly one in nine American workers, according to a new U.S. government report. About 3.8 million people drive taxis, trucks, ambulances and other vehicles for a living. An additional 11.7 million workers drive as part of their work, including personal care aides, police officers, real-estate agents and plumbers. In all, that’s roughly 11.3% of total U.S. employment based on 2015 occupational data, according to the analysis by 3 Commerce Department economists. If businesses embrace autonomous vehicles on a large scale, workers in the first category are “more likely to be displaced” from their jobs, while workers in the latter group “may be more likely to benefit from greater productivity and better working conditions”, wrote David Beede, Regina Powers and Cassandra Ingram in the report, released Friday. Automakers like Ford and General Motors, and technology giants like Alphabet and Apple, are racing to develop vehicles that can operate without a human driver. If successfully introduced in the coming years or decades, self-driving cars and trucks have the potential to reshape whole industries, and change the careers of millions of people who work in them. The Commerce Department report explored which workers are likely to be supplanted by automated vehicles, or at least see changes to their job descriptions. It didn’t analyze how the technology might help create new jobs. +++
+++ German conglomerate company SIEMENS has been tasked with building a 10-kilometre stretch of overhead contact lines on one of Germany’s autobahns to allow trucks to temporarily drive on electric power only while also charging their batteries. Acting as somewhat of a stepping stone to full-electric trucking, Siemens’s ‘eHighway’ project involves overhead power lines similar to the ones used by electric trams and trains, which allows hybrid trucks to drive at up to 90 km/h while creating zero emissions. Similar systems have already been installed in Sweden and California. While Siemens has been commissioned to manage the construction of the eHighway, the project is being funded by state and federal governments in Germany. Benefits of the system can be viewed in the below infographic: The Siemens eHighway will reside on a 10km stretch on the A5 federal autobahn between the Zeppelinheim/Cargo City Süd interchange at the Frankfurt Airport and the Darmstadt / Weiterstadt interchange. “Construction of the system will demonstrate the feasibility of integrating overhead contact systems with a public highway”, said Gerd Riegelhuth, head of transport for Hessenmobil, a German road and traffic management company. “The system will be used for real transport networks, and prove the practicality of climate-neutral freight transport in the urban region of Frankfurt”. However, the move doesn’t come without its limitations. To be of any use, the overhead contact lines need to be installed over a significant distance, which is quite costly. Additionally, connectors need to be installed on the trucks so they can make use of the eHighway’s facilities, though reports indicate that several truck manufacturers have shown interest in the technology. Siemens claims that the eHighway could save some 6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum if 30 percent of Germany’s truck traffic is electrified and supplied with renewables. +++
+++ TOYOTA ’s next generation of autonomous technology will be shown at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The brand is planning to showcase what will be its current cutting-edge driverless technology, as well as yet-to-be-seen tech, which will feature on both Lexus and Toyota models from the early 2020s onwards. As one of the lead sponsors of the Olympics, Toyota will be keen to make a good impression on global visitors to the Tokyo games, by demonstrating its cutting-edge tech. In a statement about the brand’s Olympic involvement, Toyota said: “We are excited to share a range of projects, products, and services that will bring our shared vision to life and inspire the world with the power of human mobility”. It’s likely that the brand’s autonomous technology will not be the only cutting-edge products on display; Lexus aims to have a hydrogen fuel cell-powered LF-FC on sale ahead of 2020, while Toyota plans to have its first full Electric Vehicle on sale in that year. A solid-state battery electric vehicle is also mooted for release in 2022, so Toyota may plan, like its next-generation driverless tech, to showcase the technology in the media hype surrounding the games, if not the final production car itself. A Toyota spokesman couldn’t confirm the brand’s plans for the Olympics, but by 2020 Toyota will be at a far more advanced stage in the development of both its autonomous and EV mobility strategies. +++