Outgoing Stellantis chief proposes smaller, cheaper European cars

Turin — Europe needs small and affordable cars such as Japan’s so-called “kei cars”, Stellantis chair John Elkann said on Thursday, as high prices, which he blamed on regulation in the region, weigh on consumer demand.

Kei cars are urban vehicles traditionally sold in Japan with size and engine restrictions, enjoying lower tax and insurance costs. Elkann said the European equivalent could be called the “e car”.

“There’s no reason if Japan has a kei car, which is 40% of the market, Europe should not have an e car,” he said at an Automotive News Europe conference in the Italian city of Turin, the home of Fiat, now part of Stellantis.

Fiat has a tradition of making small, affordable cars, from the “Topolino” of pre-war years to the famous “600" and “500" of the 1950s and 1960s, which helped Italians to take to the roads and turned Fiat into a European giant.

Elkann noted that in 2019 there were 49 models sold in Europe for less than €15,000 versus just one now. In 2019 a million cars were sold at that price level compared with fewer than 100,000 now, he said.

“If you actually look at the (cars’) cost increase ... that has primarily been driven by regulation,” Elkann said.

Elkann is still steering Stellantis, as newly appointed CEO Antonio Filosa formally takes the job later this month.

Filosa, an Italian national, led Fiat Chrysler and Stellantis’ operations in South America, before being appointed head of the automaker’s key North American market last year.

Elkann said Filosa was the right choice in an automotive industry that was shifting from being global to being “multi-regional”.

“The experience that Antonio had running Argentina, running Brazil, running South America, and recently running North America is very much in phase with how the world is going between regulations, tariffs, and how you ultimately navigate that constructively with political forces,” he said.

Reuters