Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares on October 3, 2024 during a factory visit in Sochaux, France (AFP / FREDERICK FLORIN)
Passionate about automobiles and an uncompromising manager, Carlos Tavares has contributed to making Stellantis a profit machine which has, however, encountered difficulties since the start of 2023.
Strict suit, thin glasses, angular face, the 66-year-old Portuguese manager made a name for himself by turning around the PSA group (Peugeot-Citroën) from 2014, by cutting costs and focusing more on profitable sales than on the number of cars sold.
And the bet of the completed megamerger between PSA and FCA (Fiat-Chrysler) seemed to have been met: since the creation of this group with fourteen brands in 2021, Stellantis has set net profit records, with a new bar at 18.6 billion dinars. euros in 2023.
The car manufacturer announced on the night of Thursday to Friday the retirement at the beginning of 2026 of Carlos Tavares, as the latter had suggested last week.
The shortage of electronic chips, which limited the production of cars, helped the group to sell them at the highest prices. But the automobile market has since stabilized at a very low level.
Stellantis coughed in the first half of 2024, with net profit halved, before sneezing in the face of more serious than expected difficulties in North America.
Managing Director Carlos Tavares had to abandon his sacred “double-digit” operating margin target for the year, which placed him far ahead of his competitors, and justified his planned salary of 36.5 million euros for the year 2023 .
Is the company’s strategy being called into question? On the contrary, it “has proven itself”, insisted the general director of Stellantis last week, right in his moccasins, during a visit to the Sochaux factory in eastern France at the beginning of October.
– “We’re racing” –
If these new objectives are a “serious warning”, “it is not Stellantis which is (in difficulty), isolated in the middle of the automobile industry (…), It is Stellantis, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, and it’s probably not over,” replied Mr. Tavares.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 5, 2023 (AFP / Robyn BECK)
In Europe, only its great French rival Renault has not yet revised its objectives downwards.
The forced electrification of the automobile complicates the prospects of these manufacturers in an already gloomy market.
Several of them, like Mercedes and Renault, have requested a downward revision of CO2 emissions standards, which will force them to sell more electric vehicles at the start of 2025.
Carlos Tavares sees things differently, after having contested for a long time a “dogmatic” transition towards 100% electric in 2035.
“Everyone has known the rules for a long time, everyone has had time to prepare, and so now we are racing,” he said in an interview with AFP in September.
Between two planes, this vintage car enthusiast visits historic race tracks around ten times a year.
The leader says he wants to “contribute to solving the problem” of global warming, for his four grandchildren, while protecting the “freedom of movement” of citizens in their cars.
And for them to be cheaper, you always have to produce less expensively, putting pressure on your employees as well as your suppliers.
– “Not afraid of being unpopular” –
Employees are regularly encouraged to leave, depending on job cuts plans. At the same time, the Franco-Italian-American group is increasingly relying on low-cost countries, such as Brazil, Morocco or Turkey, to manufacture its cars.
Several unions denounce its methods and strikes threaten in Italy and the United States.
“It is normal for the entire social body of the company to mobilize to reduce its costs,” replied Carlos Tavares during his visit to Sochaux. “The management of this company is not afraid of being unpopular.”
Having attended the French high school in Lisbon, this central player launched his career at Renault, before leaving his position as number two in 2013, muzzled by the all-powerful CEO of the time, Carlos Ghosn.
In 2014, he took charge of the PSA group, in dire straits, victim of the crisis which had caused the European market for new cars to fall. PSA was narrowly saved from bankruptcy by the arrival of the French state and the Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng in its capital.
His retirement? “If you ask my wife, she will say that it is a requirement on her part. I am a good husband,” Mr. Tavares, who lives between France and Portugal, where he owns vineyards and a garage for vintage cars.
