Here’s how Stellantis will recycle Mirafiori
The CEO of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, announces two innovations for Mirafiori: a pole of the circular economy and a new department for the production of automatic transmissions for hybrid cars. All the details (and the group's fears of the Chinese invasion)
Yesterday, the CEO of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares, announced two innovations for Mirafiori, the historic Fiat industrial district – today the Fiat 500e, an electric car, is produced here – in the south of Turin.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY AND NEW DEPARTMENT
The plant will in fact host the Stellantis pole dedicated to the circular economy; in addition, a new department dedicated to the manufacture of components for hybrid vehicles (automatic gearbox systems, specifically) similar to the one at the Metz site in France will be opened.
ALL ABOUT THE HYBRID TRANSMISSION
Stellantis aims to produce 600,000 pieces a year of the eDCT dual-clutch transmission in Mirafiori, to be fitted to hybrid cars, starting in 2024. The French site in Metz will have to build the same number, for a total of 1.2 million.
The system is developed by Stellantis in collaboration with the Belgian company Punch Powertrain.
THE VALUE OF THE INVESTMENT
Tavares did not specify the amount of the investment for the two interventions, speaking of a generic commitment worth tens of millions of euros.
TIMES, CAPACITIES AND FUNCTIONS
However, we know that the new department will be built in the northern area of Mirafiori – near the Meccaniche, where the traditional gearboxes for the Fiat Pandas are produced -, which will be operational from 2024 and will consist of two lines of 300 thousand pieces of annual capacity each.
The pole dedicated to the circular economy, on the other hand, will be built according to a modular approach, will come into operation in 2025 and will deal with the recovery of raw materials, batteries and electronic components. Battery recycling, in particular, could take place in collaboration with Teksid, a steel group owned by the Stellantis group.
NO NEW HIRES (FOR NOW)
The facility will employ 550 people, who will be transferred there from other departments. There will therefore be no new hires, although Tavares has specified not to exclude them for the future given the positive sales results of the Fiat 500e (it is the most popular electric car in Italy , according to the numbers of the MOTUS-E association).
PROBLEMS OF PROCUREMENT
The CEO stated that Mirafiori could double the production of the 500e or even triple it, reaching 90 thousand units per year. But Stellantis – it's not the only one: Ford is also in a similar situation – has semiconductor supply problems.
– Read also: Here is the impact of the absence of chips on the Italian plants of Stellantis
THE RISKS OF TRANSITION
According to Tavares, the transition to electric mobility has two risks. The first is the competitiveness of Chinese electric cars, which thanks to their lower price could steal market share from European manufacturers. The second is the need to favor the replacement of the fleet through incentives for the purchase of hybrid vehicles, which are less polluting than those with an internal combustion engine and less expensive than electric ones.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/stellantis-mirafiori-cambi-automatici-economia-circolare/ on Wed, 21 Sep 2022 09:55:18 +0000.