Carlos Tavares' recent comments are likely to send shockwaves through Europe. One year after having left the management of Stellantisthe former boss, now free of any communication constraints, delivers a brutal analysis: "Europe is going to give its automotive industry to the Chinese". A sentence that resonates all the more strongly because it comes at a time when the Group's plants are moving at radically different speeds in different countries.
A fractured continent
You only have to look at the current state of Stellantis plants to understand why Tavares' warning is not being issued in a vacuum. In Spain, the Vigo plant is experiencing a historic year: over 600,000 vehicles produced by 2025, a production rate of one vehicle per minute, four teams mobilized day and night. Vigo has become the Group's real industrial lung in Europe, boosted by competitive energy costs.
In France, the dynamic is already less favorable. The five sites in France are expected to fall below the 600,000-unit mark within three years. The decline is gradual, but real. Poissy is the focus of concern, with weakened activity and uncertain visibility. Antonio Filosa, the new CEO, is trying to rebalance the strategy between combustion, hybrid and electric, but this pivot leaves Europe in a grey zone.
It's in Italy, however, that the situation is taking on the appearance of an industrial hemorrhage. Production down to 310,000 vehicles, a 31 % drop in the third quarter of 2025, plants at partial shutdown, and the prospect of passenger car production falling below 200,000 units. Half of the Group's Italian employees are now affected by short-time working arrangements.
As Filosa reviews Stellantis' strategy, Tavares warns Europe
While European factories are struggling in an uncertain economic climate, Antonio Filosa is assuming a far-reaching reorientation of the Group's strategy. At Goldman Sachs Industrials & Autos Week, he admitted that the electrical projections were wrong and that the transition should be more gradual. In the United States, Stellantis is rediscovering the commercial effectiveness of hybrids and even V8s, while the European market is desperately awaiting regulatory relaxation.
But for Carlos Tavares, the main problem is not Stellantis. It's much broader, systemic, almost ideological. The former CEO accuses the European Union of having made a "serious mistake": imposing a technology rather than an objective. By forcing manufacturers to converge on the 100 % electric, Europe would have created a major vulnerability, leaving the way open for Chinese brands, which have been working on electromobility for twenty years, to conquer the continent.
"Ten plants will disappear
Speaking to several Portuguese media, Tavares made a chilling projection. Chinese brands, he said, will reach 10 % of the European market within five years. On the basis of 15 million vehicles a year, that would represent 1.5 million imported cars, or the equivalent of ten major European factories doomed to lose their raison d'être.
And it's here that his warning becomes prophetic and almost cinematic: "When there are demonstrations, burning tires and burning pallets, a Chinese investor will offer to buy the plant for a token sum, promising to preserve jobs. And governments will accept." For Tavares, there's nothing fictional about this scenario. It is the direct consequence of an "intellectually arrogant", overly bureaucratic Europe, which preferred to lay down technological dogmas rather than give engineers the freedom to find the most "clean, safe and accessible" solutions.
The former boss also delivers a harsh critique of European bureaucracy, which he describes as a "cancer". In his view, Europe risks disqualification in the duel between the United States and China, due to a lack of competitiveness, productivity and long-term vision. While Washington simplifies its standards and Beijing invests massively, Brussels multiplies regulations and consumes resources that could have been invested in innovation.
Tavares insists that if Europe wants to maintain its standard of living, it will have to work more and, above all, work better. Otherwise, it will become the "fuse" in the Sino-American tension.
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And who ensured that many Stellantis models went electric, without going through the hybridization process? Carlos Tavares.
Who wanted to cut costs at the expense of quality, and the image of Italian brands, by installing the PureTech engine at the expense of Italian engines like the FireFly? Tavares again.
Who made the Grande Panda in Serbia, or the Junior in Poland, to the detriment of Italian factories? Tavares.
This giver of lessons should be ashamed of what he has done.
the fault of the ecologist bobos
It's not the "greenie bobos" who get Stellantis to invest anywhere but Italy, but the Stellantis board of directors.
Mi chiedo come sia possibile che un totale incapace sfuggito anzitempo ricoperto di denaro possa ancora trovare spazio sulla stampa!
In an Italian-French group that has rightly defended the choice of multi-energy platforms, thus saving billions of euros and enabling great flexibility on the same line in response to demand, the choice of Spain, Serbia and Algeria over Turin, Termoli, Poissy or Rennes sounds like a real betrayal of the people who run it on a daily basis and have enriched the Agnelli and Peugeot families for decades, if not over a century.
Tavares did everything he could to keep the Italian factories, and even Poissy, idling by relocating production. And now he's here to give lessons? Shame on him.
The only point on which he's right is that he wants to impose a forced march towards electric cars by 2035, when sales are stagnating and this will only favor Chinese cars.
If he had trained and placed the Termoli workers on production lines for electric motors and batteries, there would have been no problem. For the Fiat brand, going electric poses no problem, and has nothing but advantages. For the Alfa Romeo, Abarth and Maserati brands, it's more difficult, as we can see with customers attached to T-Jets, V6s and V8s. At Stellantis, we still haven't understood that the crux of the electric car problem is charging time and efficiency, when the Chinese are demonstrating charging times of less than 10 minutes on large batteries.
He's the one who literally fucked up his group and he's taking the liberty of saying that 😂 A manipulation technique typical of narcissistic perverts: rewriting history to twist it to his advantage.
He's the one who brought the leapmotor into the Stellantis group.
Then he comes to make moral lessons made what I do but not what I say, what nerve!!!!
Yes, CT is in denial about the manager who screwed up. European bureaucracy has many faults, but the creation and management of Stellantis is a bigger screw-up. And it's CT that's responsible, not the Chinese.
Noi comunisti siamo per la socializzazione dei mezzi di produzione, le regolamentazione della propria privata e dei mezzi di produzione e una democrazia che sia "Governo del Popolo" come dice la parola stessa, la regolamentazione del mercato per redistribuire la ricchezza, la tassa di successione sui patrimoni. Attraversiamo a nuoto anche lo Yang Tse.
Eravamo nei reparti confino a Mirafiori e al Lingotto, ma abbiamo fatto molta strada e vendiamo auto ecocompatibili a chi ha i soldi, gli altri in tutto il mondo: si uniscano!
No se puede competir con china, ni tecnológicamente, ni en capacidad de producción a menor coste, por lo tanto hay que ir a la fusión de empresas chino-europeas si el sector no lo hace china será quien produzca los coches para europa...
As a worker at a Chrysler plant. Tavares needs to go hide under a rock and shut the F up. He totally destroyed the north American division of Stellantis. The only thing he ever said was jack the price of the vehicles sky high, cut cost, cut quality, cut employees . Stellantis will never recover from his trail of destruction. He's smiling all the way to the bank with his big buyout. Rot in H-ll Carlos.
Totally agree, shame on Tavares, the man who destroyed everything, italian cars, as well as Chrysler, and Dodge. Jeep seems to be in a better situation, no?
Er nagelt sich selbst ans Kreuz.Tja hättest was gescheites gelernt ohne Schlipps...
I'm not defending Carlos Tavares or his unbridled actions, but I'd like to come back to the basis of the article, namely the fate of the European automotive industry. Nobody can say that Europe's policies have been beneficial to the industry. It's not the relocations within Europe that are harming it, but rather the method dictated by a socialist-environmentalist movement that has pronounced an anti-industrial sentence without thinking through the consequences: "no more production of combustion-powered cars from 2035″.
What about our agriculture
We're in trouble!
In den 60'ern haben wir mit unseren Lehrern die Zukunft diskutiert. Die einhellige Meinung war und ist Wasserstoff. Mitte der 90'ger war die öffentliche Vorstellung von Wasserstoffantrieben !!!!. Produktionsreif!!!. Politik und Industrie wollten nicht !!!!. Nun haben andere das weitergetrieben. In Europa tonnenschwere Antriebskonzepte die nicht das Problem lösen. Das kann und wird der Untergang in Europa sein. Das wird zu starken Verwerfungen in den Staaten führen !!!!!.
It's ironic to hear Carlos Tavares say that "Europe is going to offer its industry to the Chinese"... when he was one of the first to sign a deal with them to import their cars!
He's the one who made agreements with the French government to push electric cars, he's the one who was banking on Chinese partnerships... and now that he's been pushed aside, he's spitting in the soup.
Forcing expensive EVs on European nations, demonising ICE, listening to everyone but the consumer. China could never make a car as iconic as a 1.2 fiat 500, a vw Golf etc etc, but they CAN offer faceless EV much cheaper than Europe can. This is the EUs fault. I suspect someone there took a backhander.