Tiamat, this is how Stellantis always flirts with France
For the mobility of tomorrow, Stellantis looks above all to France. After the joint venture on hydrogen with the two French companies Forvia and Michelin, now the investment in a transalpine startup of sodium ion batteries.
Between 2018, well before the merger with PSA, and the first half of 2022, Stellantis invested over 2 billion in French production sites. At the same time, the unions complain ( not all, notes Carlo Calenda ), the Group led by Carlos Tavares has accelerated its disengagement in those on this side of the Alps. And if in the USA Stellantis has not only had to renege on the savings plan, tears and blood, but he even accepted the demands of the unions , here in Italy he continues with his strict diet.
THE ITALIAN DIET IMPOSED BY TAVARES
According to what was reported by Corriere della Sera , last November 3 the Italian-French giant sent an email to around 15,000 Italian employees asking if they were interested in leaving the company so they could follow "new professional or personal projects", offering solutions to adhere to the so-called "safety clause", an initiative that does not require any intervention on the part of the unions, with personalized incentives based on length of service and chronological age to which further compensation must be added.
THE ALL-FRENCH CENTER OF GRAVITY OF STELLANTIS
Of course, of a branched and complex group like Stellantis, which controls fourteen car brands spread all over the world, on both sides of the ocean (from the "A" of Abarth and Alfa Romeo to the "C" of Chrysler and Citroën through Dodge, DS Automobiles, FIAT, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram Trucks up to the "V" of Vauxhall), it is not easy to glean the balance from individual news items.
However, if you line them up and add the announced investments to the abacus, a certain favoritism for French companies appears evident. Favoritism which would be significantly disadvantaging that undergrowth of third parties in the components sector that has arisen over the years around the roots of Fiat, starting with Magneti Marelli , which in fact is certainly not doing very well.
And, as the former Minister for Economic Development, Calenda, points out, another indicator is given by the patents filed : in France Stellantis 1239, in Italy 166. Or, again, to use his words, while "The Italian factories they were hit by 7,500 redundancies, the French ones zero".
The latest news that tips the scales towards Paris comes from the moves of the Stellantis Ventures fund which has decided to invest in Tiamat , a spin-off of the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) specialized in the development and marketing of battery technologies to sodium ions. The objective, it is clear, is to invest in solutions that do not include expensive lithium and cobalt so as to face the ongoing energy transition with batteries capable of guaranteeing a lower cost per kilowatt hour.
FROM ARKEMA TO AIRBUS, BAE AND LEONARDO: WHO INVESTS IN TIAMAT
Stellantis Ventures participated in a €22 million financing round led by Tiamat to raise the resources needed to support its industrial strategies. The multinational chemical company Arkema and MBDA, a joint venture between Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo in the field of missile systems, also participated in the fundraising, writes Quattroruote .
WHAT TIAMAT DOES, WHICH LEAD STELLANTIS TO INVEST AGAIN IN FRANCE
The company will use the proceeds from the fund's research plan, of which Stellantis Ventures is also part, to start the construction of a sodium ion battery plant in France. To be precise, a 5 GWh factory with around a thousand employees dedicated to the production of sodium ion battery cells. The first phase of the factory, with a capacity of 0.7 GWh, is expected to be operational by the end of 2025.
At first the batteries will be intended for electrical appliances and stationary storage applications and, subsequently, production will be increased with second generation products specific for electric vehicles.
STELLANTIS ALSO AIMS AT FRANCE FOR HYDROGEN
The news follows a few days the announcement that the experimental hydrogen project of Symbio, a 50-50 joint venture between the Italian-French group and the French Forvia and Michelin, will be financed by the French government as part of the Ipcei program (Important Project of Scientific Interest).
With reference to Stellantis' traveling companions, we wrote about the former on the occasion of the cuts in Magneti Marelli, since some observers maintain that, after the merger with Psa, the new Franco-Italian reality favored Peugeot's historic suppliers, including French Faurecia, now known as Forvia following the merger with the German Hella. It is the seventh group in the world in the components sector, with a turnover of over 25 billion, 150,000 employees in more than 40 countries.
Since 2021, Symbio has also been present in the United States, where it has a pilot plant in California which, in a first phase, is supplied by the Group's European factories. According to previous disclosures, Symbio is looking for the best conditions to build another fuel cell gigafactory in the United States.
THE FIRST STELLANTIS HYDROGEN CELL GIGAFACTORY
But, in the meantime, the Italian-French jv, with a lot of France in it and only a slice of Italy, ignites the European one. Located in Saint-Fons, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France, the SymphonHy plant will produce 50,000 fuel cell modules to power the Stellantis group's commercial vehicles. The offer in this regard is currently limited to Peugeot e-Expert, Citroën e-Jumpy and Opel Vivaro-e vehicles.
But it seems clear that, following this investment, Stellantis' catalog of hydrogen cars will be progressively enriched. The 26,000 square meter site (destined to become 40,000 square meters in the plans of the three partners by 2026) includes the Group's headquarters, a production plant, an innovation hub and the Symbio Hydrogen Academy. What is certain, however, is that both with reference to hydrogen and electric propulsion, for the mobility of the near future Stellantis is looking above all to France, leaving behind our home production hubs, many of which are still without certainty about their future.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/tiamat-ecco-come-stellantis-amoreggia-sempre-con-la-francia/ on Fri, 12 Jan 2024 15:27:31 +0000.