All right, should we get started?
Absolutely.
Carlos, good morning. Thanks for being here.
Good morning to you. Good morning to all of you.
For everybody watching, thanks so much for dialing in, and guys in the room, welcome this morning to the Stellantis Fireside Chat. My name is Daniel Roeska. I'm the head of U.S. Automotive Coverage for Bernstein here in New York, and it's my great pleasure to welcome Carlos. Probably one of the longest-serving CEOs in the sector?
Possibly.
Possibly, and definitely one of the busiest. We scheduled this quite a while back, and we're very happy you could make it. For those of you less familiar, Carlos just orchestrated the combination of Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler a couple of years back, and this company is now called Stellantis, with iconic brands you know and love, like the Ram or Opel in Germany. And maybe we'll start there. If I may ask the first question about creating Stellantis. If you go back, you know, how did that project perform? You know, against your expectations going into it, where you are today, are you happy?
Well, so far, it's fair to say that the results we have achieved are far above the expectations that were set by the shareholders when we made the decision. If you measure through synergies, we are far ahead. If we measure through the results, it is fair to say that when we created this company by bringing together the number 10 and the number 11th of the industry, we are now on the podium of the worldwide industry. So I would say so far, it has been a great journey. Personally, I've been enjoying a lot.
I think that the results speak for themselves, and at the same time, we need to recognize that it's, Stellantis is still a baby, a three-year-old baby, and as we know, the baby needs education, the baby needs care, the baby needs values, and, that's exactly the journey in which we are, which also means that the potential, of this company is by far not totally unleashed. Which is the good things that we have ahead of us and, of course, the challenges of our industry. But looking back and looking to December 2019, when we announced the deal, and we closed it in January 2021, the journey has been wonderful.
Certainly, challenging, but wonderful because the results are there, and we can enjoy the consistency between the efforts of the team, the work of all the employees of the company from one side, and from the other side, the results we were able to achieve. And when we were thinking with Mike Manley at that point in time, FCA and PSA, how could we imagine that we would create the number three car maker in the world? We could not imagine that, but that's where we are today.
As you kind of lead up to December 2019, what were some of the ideas you didn't pursue or that you parked for maybe later when you brought the two companies together?
Well, what is clear is that we have the privilege to manage a brand portfolio of 15 brands, if I include now Leapmotor. The capability to leverage the full potential of all of those brands in a global manufacturing and sales footprint that is ours, this is something that is a never-ending potential. Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, I was in Turin to launch the new Lancia Ypsilon, the first brand-new Lancia model after the merger on this brand that we are launching. We are going to introduce very soon in Europe the Leapmotor's products. There is huge amount of opportunities here in the U.S. We are just starting the offensive of our electrification.
We are already the number one in PHEV sales, so there is a potential that is a never-ending potential for this company. It's absolutely obvious, and it is coming from the diversity.
Mm.
It's coming from the fact that we are a 170 different nationalities company. We are a company that represents the whole diversity of this world, which then means that we can understand the world, perhaps slightly better than our competitors. Our competitors are Japanese, they are Germans, they are Americans. We are 170 different nationalities.
How do you bring together that expertise in the, in the company? I mean, what are the mechanisms that you actually get the insights from those 170 diverse countries?
It's based on a level of delegation, which is quite high, quite high, on a three-dimensional matrix organization. We have three axes: one is the region, the other one is the brand, the third one is the function. And with this three-dimensional matrix, we created the positive tension that we need to find the best possible solutions to compete with the other companies. On these positions, where yesterday I was in Auburn Hills discussing with our North American team, you can find the expertise of people on manufacturing that may not be, the local people. You find local people mastering, the way they understand their market. So when you are on a three-dimensional matrix organization, you are trying to bring, when you want to solve a problem, the best expertise of those three axes around the world.
Of course, you need to know your people. Our top leadership team is 35 executive vice presidents, so huge amount of expertise, huge amount of talent, a huge amount of energy. So you are always spotting where you have the best people that you bring in on a 3- or 4-member task force to fix an issue, wherever the issue, wherever the issue is... and, and you always bring that talent to the table. And that is fun from a management perspective, I, I really enjoy it. And secondly, it gives you access to a pool of talent that you have across the world, because you are constantly making business reviews on the functional axis or the original axis or the brand axis. So that gives you an opportunity to spot the talent and to grow the talent across the company.
Is the flip side of this complexity, and how do you kind of deal with that?
Yes, it is the flip side. You are right. It's a matter of first enjoying what you are doing, and not only at the CEO level, at every level of the company. We call it, you take the high road, which means you need to enjoy the global dimension of the company and diversity of the backgrounds, diversity of the thinkings, the diversity of the arguments, and you need to play with it. You need to love this kind of diversity, and you need to love the fact people may have a different opinion from yours. And if you do it well, from I would say an emotional intelligence perspective, then you enjoy it. But yes, it's complex. It's a 3-dimensional matrix. It's 15 brands. It's a market coverage, which covers the whole world, so it's very different situations.
In a world of regulatory chaos, geopolitical tensions, supply chain issues, it's complex, but anyway, the world is complex.
Do you think you have all the capabilities you want to have for the upcoming years in the top leadership team, or are there certain areas where you say, "Look, we need to get some more people or find some more capabilities in this, this sense?
The answer is clearly, certainly not. Certainly not. When you are facing operational issues, that you need to fix, you clearly see where the problems are. So I would say that the search for talent is a never-ending story, and the day where I would tell you that I have everything I need, please put me out, because that would be, of course, wrong, right? No, the world is changing very fast, the technologies, the markets, the stakeholders, the governments, all of needs, needs a constant adaptation, a constant change. And I was talking about diversity of people. We could talk about enjoying the chaos, enjoying the unknown. When you are in an unknown area and something happens, if you have the right people with you, you can solve the problems.
Mm-hmm.
This is something I can share with you over 43 years of automotive life: I have never found one single problem that a small group of well-intended, well-educated people could not solve. I have never, ever found a problem that we cannot solve, which means it's all about bringing the right people with the right spirit around the table to fix a problem that you can express in a clear way. So from that perspective, the search for talent is a never-ending story, and it would be dumb and arrogant from my perspective, if I was to say that we are where we should be.
Maybe, tackling the, the biggest problem the market sometimes is concerned with these days. Let's talk a bit about electrification. I'll use that as a, as a segue here. Maybe first, to get your high-level view, where is electrification, and where do you think electrification will be in the different regions you're active in? So how you're thinking about kind of that, that trajectory?
I will, I will sound like a broken record because if you check my statements, what I'm going to tell you now is what I've been telling you for the last five or six years. What the consumers are looking for everywhere in the world is a safe, clean, and affordable mobility, and this is the reason why we exist. We, we Stellantis, we exist to offer freedom of mobility, and that freedom of mobility needs to be safe, clean, and affordable. Safe, it's quite clear that the automotive industry, and specifically Stellantis, has a huge expertise in terms of, anticipating the problems that may happen. We are not perfect, but we are trained to do that. Clean, zero-emission mobility is something that we are able to do, at least on the mobility device.
But as you know, the zero-emission mobility is not only about the mobility device, it's the full life cycle analysis, which is a much larger problem than just the automotive industry. And the third one is affordability. Right now, the electrification is crashing on the world of reality, which is affordability. And we have been saying this for the last five years, most possibly in the wrong way, because we, we were not so much listened to. But now, the transition to electrification is bumping on affordability as the number one problem. It's not the only problem. It's not the only problem. It's also a matter of convenience, because fundamentally, you have to do three things for this transition to be a success.
Point number one, you need to make sure that people can see the convenience of, the charging, which means you should never look for a charging unit. The charging units should bump on you over your daily journey, naturally. If you go to the office, you can charge on the parking lot. If you go to the mall, you can charge at the mall. If you go to gym, you can charge in parking lot of gym. If you go to the restaurant, you can charge. So wherever your journey is, you need to bump naturally on the charging spots. And of course, as we all know, the development of the infrastructure across the world, and specifically across the Western world, is late against the EV product offering… and that is a major issue for, of course, the, the, the governments.
So first of all, you need a reasonably dense and visible charging network. The second thing you need is the product. You need a product that brings you the range, and the range is something that is totally connected with the number one point, which is, if you don't have a very dense charging network, you need to bring a significant range. And Stellantis has made the decision, strategic decision, to bring high-range cars. More than 500 miles, more than 350 miles, and you'll see all the STLA platforms are bringing a significant amount of range, which means a significant amount of energy that you store in the car. So these products now are available.
We are going to be offering no less than 47 models, electric models by the end of this year, which means almost half of our bit less than 100 models on sale, so half of it is now electric. So we have this capability, and we are entering, we been made on two major directions. Number one is significant range, number two is multi-energy. And the number three factor is the affordability, and the affordability is the key success factor right now. Why? Because if you want the scale to materialize, you need to be selling BEVs to the middle classes.
Mm-hmm.
Which basically means that you need to sell the BEVs at the price of ICEs.
Mm-hmm.
That is where the challenge is for everybody, is that if you want to sell to the middle class, you need to sell BEVs at the price of ICEs, and the EVs are 40%-50% more expensive in total production cost than the the ICE vehicles. Which then means that we are not in a race to transition to EVs, but in a race to cut costs on EVs.
Mm-hmm.
That's where you are going to see a very nice, competitive, landscape appear, comparing the guys that are able to get that job done.
Mm-hmm.
- and the guys that will not be able to get that job done. So if you don't absorb the 40% of additional cost to sell to the middle class BEVs at the price of ICEs, you have two options: either you are outpriced and you lose, your footprint, your share, or, you are going to create significant social issues somewhere, either in your company or, in, in your suppliers. The next step of this story is that we all know that the cost structure of, an automobile is 85% of parts that you buy, 10% of added value in your plants, 5% logistics.
If you have to absorb 40%-50% of additional cost to sell BEVs at the price of ICEs, you are going to have to absorb those 40% in proportion of 85, 10, 5.
Mm.
Which means big, big, big burden on our suppliers. Which means that you are going to see significant change in the supplier base moving forward, because if they cannot contribute for any reason, that, would be their strategic decision, then they are going to be in trouble to be supportive of this race. So if you project yourselves 5 years down the road or 10 years down the road, there will be a significant, different footprint, sorting out the ones that were able to absorb the 40%-50% additional cost and the ones that couldn't. And when I say the ones that couldn't, I'm talking about the OEMs and the suppliers.
Mm-hmm.
You can already see in Europe significant Tier 1 suppliers with very well-known names that are already in trouble.
Mm-hmm.
For this specific reason. The EV race has become a cost-cutting race.
How much of that cost cutting do you think is implementing ideas you see in other cars, right? We've all seen the Tesla teardowns or the Chinese teardowns and, body to pack directly, open body, you know, quite a few ideas that Western OEMs were late to adopt or slower to adopt, and how much is really then more efficiency in the entire chain? So what portion could you just do through better design of EVs that are different?
I think we have three, three layers to answer your question. The first layer is a pure design to cost layer, which is a pure engineering layer. When we break down the cars, what is stunning is that everything that relates to the battery packs and to the storage of battery cells is just... starting point. It's not optimized.
Mm-hmm.
It's very basic. You can see with your eyes that you are wasting material, that you are too heavy, you have too many fixing points everywhere, that the harness is not optimized. So today, the storage of battery cells and modules in a platform is something that, from an engineering standpoint, on a pure design to cost, has a huge potential. And you can break down the cars, and you see things which are unbelievable. I mean, I couldn't imagine that that could exist today. I will give you an example. One of my highly respected U.S. BEV competitors is making batteries that you cannot open.
A battery, if you have a bump on a rock on the road, and your battery pack is damaged, and you cannot fix it, you cannot repair it, it's a $7,000-$8,000 repair, and the battery pack is not engineered to be repaired. So what do you do? You take a 1,000-pound battery pack, and you throw it away. Well, that's very environmentally friendly, isn't it? Right. So this is where we are. So this is just starting. We have one century of ICEs.
Mm-hmm.
So design to cost, huge, huge potential to improve. Good news, good news. We have 28,000 engineers at Stellantis. Good news, that's point number one. Second point is that the sourcing. The sourcing is a fantastic potential. When you look at the cost competitiveness of the suppliers around the world, you see easily, easily, a 30%-40% cost variation. When you go from the Western world to India, to Turkey, to Morocco, in some cases to Mexico, you have a 30%-40% variation on the cost of the same part, the same system, with the same specs. This design to source potential is enormous, and this is the reason why to absorb the 40% of EV additional cost, you are going to see a huge shift of the supplier base.
The sourcing will move from the Western world to the best cost countries, because there is a 30%, a 30% out there. So... And this is one of the things that we see when you compare ourselves, on the breakdown with the Chinese competitors is, when you break down, you see that the difference is only in two systems. One is the sourcing our parts.
Mm-hmm.
All the parts are sourced locally in China. The second one is the cost of batteries. That's where they make the difference, and they have a 30% ex works competitive edge. To finish the answer, the first topic is design, design to cost, huge potential. The second one is design to source in best cost, cost countries. And the third topic is about the way you source your raw materials. Because as you know well, on the battery pack, that represents 40% of the total production cost. The raw materials are again, 40% of those 40%. The raw materials, the way you are going to source, either you source directly or with your own investments, with your vertical integration, or you source through suppliers.
If you source through suppliers, they will ask you a pass-through on the raw material cost. You see that there is a big potential also in the way you vertically integrate. By the way, this is the reason why we are the leading investor of ACC, to make our own battery cells and battery models, is to have the control of that vertical integration. We are the leading shareholder, and we have Mercedes also being our partner on that company. So those are the three major things: design to cost, design to source, and vertical integration on the raw materials. I think if we perform on those three pillars, then we may be one of the winners of this race.
Today, when we think about, I know, ë-C3, for example, what's the cost delta against the comparable model in your portfolio right now?
Very significant. As you know, the Citroën ë-C3 is a B-segment hatchback, 300 kilometers of range, entry price, EUR 20,000, mid-term, EUR 23,000. This is... We are now launching the car.
Mm-hmm.
This is the perfect tool to compete with the Chinese.
Mm-hmm.
And we are making money. We are not making as much money as I would like, but we are making money. It's the beginning of the story, and there is huge potential to reduce the total production cost of the car. And I'm very excited about this. And I see that with this car, which is made in Trnava, in Slovakia, with most of the sourcing in LCC. When I compare with the Chinese cost breakdown that I can access to through Leapmotor investment, I can see that we are on the right path. But of course, nothing is really done in the Western world on that car. Nothing.
When you say making money, is that variable, gross profit, or?
Per unit margin. Per unit margin.
Okay, AOI?
Yes.
Okay.
AOI margin.
That's, that's good news.
Yes, it is good news, but it's not enough.
How long do you think it will take you to get a car like that, kind of to a cost level of a nice car?
I would say three years max.
That's fast. What-
It's what you need. Look, my respected German competitor, they said they are going to bring a EUR 20,000 car in 2027, right? I'm launching it now. I'm launching now.
They, they've tried different approaches to that.
But that's why the interesting thing about what we are going through is, this is a cost-cutting exercise.
You know, given what you said, I would assume you're expecting the share of EV sales for Stellantis to be significantly higher at the end of the year, and again as you go forward.
I would be a little bit less optimistic by saying we are right now fighting with Tesla in Europe for number two, because we are just starting the BEV offensive in the U.S. So now we are starting. You will see the first models... You saw immediately the Wagoneer as being launched, I think today in Wall Street. So you will see the car. The car is fantastic. So we are starting the U.S. offensive now, and we will bring this year around the 6-8 models, which is already a lot, most of them on the H2 . And in Europe, we are competing with Tesla, and it's... on one month we are ahead, and the other month they are behind, but it's very close.
And what we see is that it all depends on the support that the governments are giving the consumer to make it affordable. Even at EUR 23,000, a B-segment hatchback, a BEV, is more expensive than an ICE. An ICE would be at EUR 15,000, right? So even there, where we are the best of the industry, it's not enough. So when the governments stop incentives, when the Germans, the Italians, they stop incentives, the demand doesn't drop, it collapses, it stops. Boom! There is something in the mindset of the consumer that says, "If you don't help me, I'm not going to help you on the global warming story." This is what's going on. And you see in Germany, when the incentives stop, the demand collapses. In Italy, it's the same thing. Let me give you two examples, or even three.
France, 15% BEV sales mix. Spain, 4%. Italy, 2%. Scandinavia, 40%. So how can you have such a big variation? The answer is simple: you just have to see the correlation between the incentives and the orders. So today, what the Western world consumer is telling the Western world governments is, "Okay, there is the global warming issue, fine, but if you don't help me, I will not help you." And that's where you will have a lot of bumps. I think the trend is there. I think it will come. I think our kids will push us to get it to make it happen, and that's fine. But how many bumps you have on the road, how many slowdowns, how many accelerations, that's TBD. That's TBD.
Given what you just elaborated, how do you view the U.S., where there might be more bumps ahead? So how do you prepare a company this big for a range of different outcomes?
The first thing that I can share with you is, in the same way we brought the 20,000 EUR Citroën ë-C3, you will have a $25,000 Jeep very soon. Because we are using the same expertise, 'cause we are a global company, and this is totally fluid across the engineering world of Stellantis. I think we have exactly the same problem. I don't want to make speculation about the environmental sensitivity of the U.S. citizens compared to the rest of the world. I will not go on that direction. That may be a little bit slippery, but it's up to you to judge. But what is clear, and it is normal: affordability.
If you ask me what is an affordable BEV, I would say EUR 20,000 in Europe and $25,000 in the U.S. Our job is to bring a safe, clean, and affordable BEV to the U.S. $25,000 will do it.
Maybe we'll take a step back and zoom out a bit and talk a bit about consolidation in the industry. We've been through a wave of consolidation over the past decade, right now, not much is happening. What's your outlook? How will this continue, maybe also in the three regions? How do you think the industry will shape up?
It's like a fruit tree. In my farm in Portugal, I have a lot of orange trees, which means when the fruit is growing, there is a point in time, if you shake the tree, the oranges will fall. You are in this period right now, which means it's a very challenging period, a very chaotic, very Darwinian. You will see things will happen naturally as the problems will accumulate. But we are just at the beginning of the story. If you ask me, when did the Darwinian period start? I would say by the end of Q3, 2023.
Mm-hmm.
That's where it started.
Mm-hmm.
But now it's there. Now, it's not, watch out, there is a storm coming. We are in the storm, and this storm is going to last a few years. It's going to put a certain number of companies in trouble, from a regulatory standpoint. The Western governments will have difficult decisions to make because if their regulation is going to create unemployment and social unrest, they will have to change something.
Mm-hmm.
I think for the next five years, a lot of different and high-tension situations will be created. I always use an example, which is very simplistic, but I'm sure that we can share the math. Look at the market share of Chinese car makers in Europe. This year, they will be at 10%. 10% market share of a 15 million car market. That makes 1.5 million. 1.5 million is 10 plants of 150K. So today, the sales that are made by the Chinese car makers in Europe represent 10 plants. So what do you do with your 10 plants? You give them to the Chinese? You shut them down? If you don't take care of the affordability and the margins of your BEVs, you can easily anticipate what's going to happen. You can easily anticipate.
On that anticipation path, you find what you are looking for, which is what is going to be the next step of consolidation of the industry. But it will happen under the pressure of can you make affordable EVs profitable, that the middle classes can buy? That's, that's where it's going to come from.
How do you judge the effectiveness of governments potentially putting up barriers, and is that a good idea to maybe give domestic or regional OEMs more time to adapt?
The question of time, which is of the essence, is the question that we should have asked ourselves before we made the decisions, right? I'm talking to the European Union, I'm talking to the U.S. administration. Yes, of course, time is of the essence, but at the same time, to their merit, you cannot give time when you have the Chinese knocking at your door, and certainly not if you are a global company, and we are a global company. So right now, we are the number one automotive group in Latin America, 23% market share. We are the number one brand with Fiat. I am the target of the Chinese invasion in Latin America. We are fighting with those guys. Same in Africa, Middle East, where I'm number two. Same in Europe, where I'm number two.
So the point is, yes, time helps, but you cannot stop the competition. You cannot stop the competition. I was explaining to the French government the other day a very simple statement, which was: Europe has made the choice of protection to the detriment of racing. If you are in a world where the GDP growth is 2%-3%, it's not very far from a zero-sum game. Not very far from a zero-sum game. If somebody wins, somebody else has to lose. If you go on the protection side, instead of going on the racing side, guess who is going to lose? It's quite obvious, right? At the end of the day, the governments, they are trying to manage short-term issues, but the real question is: how do you make your industry competitive?
If you isolate your industry from the rest of the world, is that going to help you to be competitive, or do you accept to lose your export capability? I was discussing with the Italian unions this week, and of course, they tried to ensure that we have enough activity for the Italian plants for the next years, et cetera. I was telling them, "Look, you are in a country where you have 2% BEV sales. Eventually, the rest of Europe will continue to grow, and you would like eventually that we align exactly to a country where the government doesn't like BEV. I can do that, but the problem is, we are exporting 63% of the production.
So if we align on Italy, and you are exporting 63% to countries that will become BEV, what happens to the production?" So you cannot isolate, in today's world, one country, one region from the rest of the world, unless you explain to the people that putting you in a bubble, so-called protecting you, means you are going to become poorer, which obviously nobody is going to explain. So I think that protectionism, overall, at least for Stellantis, is a bad thing. I think it creates inflation inside of the bubbles.
Mm-hmm.
It kills the export capability. Once you are doing this, the winners are going to be the guys that can manufacture inside of the bubble, the best engineering and the best technologies for the lowest cost. Which means the global companies that will be exposed to the harsh competition of the Chinese car makers are going to be the winners, if they are able to survive through the Chinese competition.
You clearly see Stellantis on a path where you'll be one of the winners in bubbles or no bubbles.
We are working for that.
We're working for that.
Mm.
Is there a scenario where you would think there might be an opportunity for you to take on board somebody else in the region? So, you know, is there a scenario where you think that there could be somebody left by the wayside and there might be something to pick up, and what kind of assets would you be looking for?
The rationale is quite simple, and this is not an understatement in what I'm going to share with you. The rationale is simple: Whatever happens, we need to be fit to capture the opportunity. That's the rationale. At any point in time, if an opportunity comes, we will, of course, consider, but we have to be fit at the moment where that opportunity is passing by. Which means that, I'm not disregarding the strategic dimension of your question, I'm just saying, we need to be having a clear direction, and we have, with our Dare Forward 2030 plan, and we need to make the recurrent profits and recurrent free cash flows to be in a position where if the opportunity comes, we can consider and eventually we can decide and go.
So that's our rationale, is keep ourselves fit, keep doing the right things in the right way, so if something happens, and it's going to happen because the level of brutality and the level of chaos of the industry is too high.... I can assure you that it's too high. Something is going to break somewhere. And I don't know where it's going to break. I'm trying to steer my company in a way that will be certainly, and I'm very confident, one of the survivors. But the best way to be one of the survivors is to compete with the harshest possible competition in the world, which means that putting you behind a protectionist bubble is not going to help you to be competitive. Eventually, it will buy you time if you shrink.
If your strategy is to shrink and stay inside of the bubble, it will buy you time, but certainly, it will cut your future.
Mm-hmm. Is there a scenario in which you would consider more vertical integration? We talked about kind of difficult times for suppliers earlier. If we kind of take a long look in kind of the past 60 years, right, there was a trend where OEMs kind of spun off that kind of activity. Is there a possibility that that comes back in as you see some consolidation in the industry?
That's exactly what we are doing right now. Because as the cost competitiveness has become a vital matter for all the car makers, we have very sophisticated tools to calculate what the cost of a given part or a system should be. In our wording, we call it the should cost.
Mm-hmm.
It's the should cost. This should cost this. And then we compare what our suppliers offer to the should cost, and then we make our own assessment. If we were to make it inside, could we achieve the should cost?
Mm-hmm.
Each time the answer is yes, we do it. This is the beauty of having a sound financial situation. We are doing it in many technologies right now. We are insourcing a lot of stuff. First, it makes sense from a social perspective, because if you generate a lot of productivity, you have a lot of room to reduce your head count, which obviously is not always easy. It's better if you have this room-
Mm-hmm
... that is the result of your productivity, that when you are competitive in cost and quality, you win source. And, we are doing it in many different fronts, in many different regions, by the way, and it's working very well because it empowers people.
Mm-hmm.
When you say, "Well, if you do it yourself here, you are going to save this amount of money, and all the problems you have been fighting on quality, you can fix them yourself." Most of the time, I find very excited teams saying, "Well, we are going to do it ourselves. Don't worry, we take care of it." It's rewarding because you feel kind of energy that looks like, "Well, in the past, we were not happy to give away that activity. Now we can get it back because our cost is better, our quality is better." And this is possible because the environment of the company is lean enough. Because if you put on their back a lot of fixed cost, breakdowns and deployments, you kill their business case.
So you need to keep the company very fit so that the business case they build is not going to be polluted by too much overheads and things like that. But it's what we are doing, and in a very different kinds of commodities, and that is working very well. So the answer to your question, yes, it's going to happen. It's going to happen now.
The next phase, if I summarize briefly, let's say the next 3, 4, 5 years, is characterized by you, by other OEMs trying to get to cost parity with the ICE cars, using all the available levers they have.
Yes.
If we think beyond that for a second and imagine ourselves in a happy place, that we are at cost, cost parity, electric cars get a higher sales volume. When does the negative operating leverage on the combustion engine side of the business become an issue?
Depends a lot on your business footprint. What is clear is that if you have a very high level of dispersion across the world, when you can easily see that, when you discuss with the head of state of non-Western countries, they clearly tell you that they will go at their own pace, i.e., the pace that their society can digest. So it's easy. It's easy, and this is the strategic decision we have made, I think six years ago, which was to say: Look, if you have the BEV, that is going to be the highest technology product, what are you going to offer to the middle classes? And we have made a strategic decision, is we are going to converge to a very highly efficient, reasonably sophisticated engine, three-cylinder, turbo engine, 1.2-liter electrified, we call MHEV.
That technology is affordable for the middle classes, and that technology represents a very big volume, and that technology is very, very profitable. So that's the bread and butter. Then we bring the sophisticated EVs with 500 range, with all the bells and whistles, all the connectivities, all the infotainments of the world. Right now, that's positioned on top of that. So we are moving on a PHEV, BEV, high-end direction with an MHEV core of the market, highly profitable technology that I can manufacture outside of the Western world.
Mm-hmm.
Which means you are going to see that some of the ICE manufacturing assembly lines are going to move outside of the Western world to be supporting locally the regions where they are going to experience a time lag in terms of electrification. They will be electrifying, but at a pace that, at any point in time, protects the affordability. And you have the example of Brazil, which is a matter I discussed with President Lula da Silva, which is interesting case. They have the flex fuel, the ethanol-based fuel. At 100% of ethanol that they create in their own country with no opposing factor against food, they can have the same carbon footprint as a BEV with a European energy mix.
Mm-hmm.
So why would they take the risk to transform their industry and put it upside down?
Mm.
If they already have the same carbon footprint as BEV, and if they already have the affordability for their middle classes? So the decision of the president of Brazil was to say: "Well, I'm not—I don't need the BEVs. By the way, I'm going to slow down the, the Chinese." And they have an interesting customs tax system where it's going to grow. Everywhere in the world you can import BEVs for zero duty, except in Brazil, where it's growing, because they already have the low-emission, if not zero-emission vehicles, for an affordable price for the middle classes. So I think that we will have to manufacture mild hybrid versions in the non-Western worlds.
Mm-hmm.
and we will have to cut costs on the BEVs for the Western world. That's how we see the future.
Mm-hmm. Maybe in the last few minutes, rounding this up and taking a view on financials a bit. If you were to think about your 2024 outlook, you gave guidance earlier after the Q1 also. You know, what are the overall ambitions you still have, and how are you feeling about the numbers this year so far?
We started the year on the point of adjusting to the real markets that were getting tougher at the beginning of the year. That's a fact. The markets became more competitive in Q1, at a moment where we were trying to adjust, and we are adjusting our inventories. So it was a difficult beginning. Now we are coming out of that period, and we are bringing a lot of new products that were also launched in the H1 . I could mention the brand new Peugeot E-3008, the Citroën ë-C3, which is now being launched. We are preparing for the new Dodge Charger... Challenger. We are launching the Wagoneer, the Wagoneer S.
So H1 is a transient period to prepare for the launch of those new products, which are expected to be very profitable. So it's a transitional year, where we have, from one side, obviously, a market that is more competitive and more demanding at the moment where we are making this transition, and those products will be launched on the H2. So I see a year that starts painfully and that improves through the year.
Mm-hmm.
That's what we see right now.
If you think about your investor base, Stellantis has had quite a run last year. Maybe in keeping with your outline just now, it's taking a breather. But what would your message to investors be? Where do you want to be in three, four, five years, right? Why is this the company they should invest in?
Well, looking at our multiples, what we have to say is that the potential is enormous. That's obvious. And so it's not rocket science. When I see the problems that we are fixing today, it's all about fixing operational problems to get closer to the operational excellence that we are looking for. It's very interesting to see that overall, on the strategic decisions we have made within Dare Forward, there is nothing I would change today against what has been done over the last three years at Stellantis, strategically speaking. Of course, we are adjusting the investments on the capacity of battery cells. We will need to waste the money of the shareholders if we can have an adapted base of investment against what the market is asking.
That is normal, normal course of action that we are executing, of course, on a daily basis, so that we don't waste our cash. That's obvious. But beyond that, strategically, what we have done with the multi-energy STLA platforms, what we have done with the MHEVs, the PHEVs, the BEVs, the product offensive on the BEVs, the way we are improving our per unit margins on the BEVs to bring them as close as possible to the ICE margins, and our BEVs are in the black, which is important. That's our starting point. Those decisions appear, and I'm saying this with all the needed, humility, appear to be the right decision. So today, what is, I think, interesting to say, is that we are facing operational issues.
The good thing about operational issues is that you can identify the root causes, you can identify the countermeasures, and you can execute the countermeasures, which has happened to us. You remember last year with the outbound logistics, where we had a huge mess, and we fixed the problem. We created a brand-new transportation company that is called Drive4You. We are now taking care of our own transportation at a lower cost than our transportation suppliers... so our costs have become lower, our quality has improved, we are in control of our logistics. Which means that those operational issues, they are painful when you get hit on the face, but the good thing is you can understand what you're talking about. You can identify the problem, the root cause, countermeasure, execute PDCA, blah, blah, blah.
And that's exactly where we are. So if I was to imagine, which is a dream, that we would be able to fix all of our operational issues, my God, this is a huge potential! So what I would tell the investors is, recognize that Stellantis is very different from all the other car makers in terms of diversity, in terms of background of the people that are dealing with this, with this company. In terms of strategy, the strategy is working. We have a clear strategy, and so far, as you remember, two years ago, in this kind of chat, you would have asked me: Don't you think that your multi-energy platform is a burden because you are not optimizing on the BEV?
And I would have, I would have explained, no, because, you know, the air conditioning system, if you only make it a BEV, I will push it forward by 100 mil, but doesn't change the roominess in the cabin, blah, blah, blah. So that was two years ago, and today, well, multi-energy, good. It's good to face uncertainty, right? So the point is that, if we were able to fix all of our operational issues, to bring the appropriate talent to help us speed up fixing those issues, the potential of the company is enormous, and we are very different from the other guys, including in the way we have addressed the Chinese offensive, to be ourselves Chinese, by taking a significant share of Leapmotor and by controlling all the exports out of China to our benefit.
So we are very different, and we like to be different, and we are racers. So that's what I would tell the investors.
I'll ask one final question: If we meet again next year, and I get to ask you again, what is the one thing you'd like investors to measure you by over the next 12 months?
Wow! That's a tough one. Resilience. Resilience, 'cause we are in Darwinian period. Resilience.
You will have opportunity, I assume.
Resilience. This is where I think we are among the best.
Carlos, thank you very much.
You are welcome. Thank you.