Automotive News Europe - Talk From The Top Supplement - December 2019 - 29

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

TALK FROM THE TOP

Automobiles, don't break out their results
or issue earnings guidance, which is sensible because we are all one integrated
group. You see the effects of the successful integration everywhere in the company.
For example, the entire German sales
team from our sister brands moved to Rüsselsheim from Cologne in November.

the Grandland X, something closer to
4.8 meters in length?
The era of the very large SUV is over. The
The era of the
market doesn't have sufficient volume.
very large SUV is over.
They are impractical and opposition to
them is rising within society. We are well
They are impractical
positioned with our existing range of comand opposition
pact SUVs. What I can say about a nextto them is rising
Tavares said Rüsselsheim's manufac- generation Insignia is that simply assumturing costs are 60 percent higher than ing the body styles will continue exactly as
within society.
at some of PSA's other plants even after they are now in the future is wrong.
the restructuring. Why is that?
So you would rather have two small
We have made substantial progress narcrossovers competing against each
rowing the cost gap with PCD (Peugeot,
other in the same segment than exCitroen and DS) plants, but it is correct
that Opel plays an important role in the that we in Germany are the farthest be- pand into a new one?
group. PSA is all about performance. If hind and Rüsselsheim in particular. While The successor to the Mokka X will be
you don't deliver, then it doesn't matter we have high wage and energy costs here, a standard bearer for our brand. It will
what board or committee you are on.
that is not a valid excuse. There is no rea- have a much greater focus on lifestyle
What motivated the team to achieve son why Rüsselsheim cannot reach the and will carry many elements of the very
benchmark. It's up to us to take out the stylish GT X Experimental concept. That
the target seven years early?
When you have a new owner after two complexity that is driving the costs. We will help differentiate it more from the
decades of never-ending restructuring will see tremendous improvements with Crossland X going forward.
plans, people know change is not going the next generation Astra, built on a PSA What would the PSA-FCA merger
to be incremental any longer. We used platform as of 2021. Also, our flagship, the mean for Opel?
the opportunity to question everything Insignia, which we currently build in Rüsselsheim, is the vehicle with the most op- There's a chance for us to have greater
about our operations.
tions in our portfolio, but you can expect economies of scale, but at the end of the
Such as?
that will change in the next generation.
day nothing changes in terms of our positioning in the market. Before and after,
We reinvented Opel. We started with Could you elaborate?
Opel and Vauxhall will still be the only
symbolic topics. Whether it was cookies
at meetings or the personal chauffeur for Our model range was far too complex in German and British brands in the group.
the CEO, cost cuts were made across the the past. We want to focus on a certain
board. When we temporarily cut working number of models but get them right So Vauxhall stays?
hours at our Rüsselsheim factory in January and then considerably reduce complex- For sure. There is no other British vol2018, we also reduced hours here at head- ity within each model line. We are ab- ume brand around. We believe this is
quarters. That never happened before. We solutely focused on managing the two an opportunity, especially in the time of
reduced the number of senior executives issues driving our business: CO2 compli- Brexit. We have seen a clear increase in
by almost one-third to accelerate the orga- ance and segment profitability.
volumes of our Vivaro, which is built in
nization. These moves did not go unnoticed. What will the next Insignia look like the UK, after we advertised it was, Made
People saw a whole new company. This given midsize sedans are out of fash- in Britain for Britain. Focusing on its
had a profound effect internally and helped ion? Could it be an SUV larger than unique Britishness is paying off.
ANE
the team execute much more quickly and
easily. We couldn't have imagined that we
would slash fixed costs by 28 percent last
year. The biggest levers, however, were
the reduced complexity combined with improved pricing power and revenue per car.
They really made the turnaround possible.
Can you sustain the 6 percent margin
when automakers are indicating we
are at peak profitability as CO2 compliance starts to hit the bottom line?
First of all, we are very ambitious and
will not slow down our efforts to continually improve our results. That being said,
starting next year our results will be consolidated with the rest of the PSA brands.
Why?
The other brands, Peugeot, Citroen and DS

2019

In Partnership with

Opel's flagship, the Insignia, offers the most options of any car
in the brand's portfolio. Lohscheller aims to cut back on that complexity to cut costs.

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Automotive News Europe - Talk From The Top Supplement - December 2019

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