MILAN – The CEO of Stellantis Carlos Tavares has launched the challenge: to restore production in Italy to over one million units a year of cars and commercial vehicles thanks also to the addition of a fifth model to the Melfi plant, in addition to the four previously announced.
These five models will be based on the new Stla Medium platform presented last week which ensures up to 700 km of autonomy. This architecture is developed for electric cars in segments C and D, those of medium-large size cars between 4.3 and 4.9 meters in length and wheelbase between 2.7 and 2.9 metres. The ground clearance of more than 220 millimeters will also allow off-road use for the Jeep.
Segments C and D represent the heart of the global automotive market and last year reached 35 million units out of a global market of 79.4 million.
Thus the Melfi factory, which currently produces the Fiat 500X and the Jeep Renegade and Compass, will be transformed into a pole dedicated to premium models for foreign brands, plus an Italian one. These are two cars for the DS brand, one for Opel, the Lancia flagship which will be called Gamma and a fifth model which according to the unions could be the successor to the Jeep Compass.
The proposal to add a fifth model to the Lucanian factory was put forward during the meeting of 10 July in Rome between the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso and Tavares, but the Italian-French group set one condition: the “necessary improvement of site performance to ensure its sustainability in a context of increasing competition”.
For its part, to support the transformation project of “Melfi fits for five,” Stellantis has already allocated millions of euros of investments, as Tavares confirmed that Italy remains central to Stellantis. “I am confident that we will create the conditions to first reverse the downward trend in production volumes over the next two years and then build together the roadmap to produce one million vehicles in Italy,” explained the CEO.
In Italy, production exceeded one million units in 2017 (1,035,454) and then gradually decreased to 673,574 in 2021. Last year there was a small rebound to 685,753 and, after a first half year of growth of 15.3% to 405,870 pieces, the hope of closing the year at 800,000.
To reach one million units produced in Italy, Stellantis hopes for the government’s commitment to support the national automotive supply chain and underlines that, in order to maintain Italian competitiveness, it is essential to act on the costs of energy supply and transformation. In addition, it is necessary to take into account various factors such as market forecasts, the affordability of cars for Italian customers, the impact of regulations such as Euro 7 on the Fiat Panda and incentives for low environmental impact vehicles.