"Not looking at the entire life cycle of electric cars is obviously very restrictive," said the manager to the French daily newspapers Les Echos, German Handelsblatt, Italian Corriere della Sera and Spanish El Mundo.
"With the European energy mix, an electric vehicle must drive 70,000 km to compensate for the bad carbon footprint of battery manufacturing and start to widen the gap with a light hybrid vehicle", he assures.
“We also know that a mild hybrid vehicle costs half as much as an electric vehicle,” observes Mr. Tavares.
"We must not lose sight either that we risk (...) losing the middle classes who will no longer be able to buy a car and that there will be social consequences."
“It is therefore too early to say whether the European approach is reasonable”, he says with a certain irony, pleading once again for the maintenance of hybrid vehicles.
"All in all, is it better to agree to run high-performance thermal hybrid cars so that they remain affordable and bring an immediate carbon benefit, or do we need 100% electric vehicles that the middle classes will not be able to afford, while asking the States to continue to widen the budget deficit to subsidize them? It is a social debate that I would dream of having, but for the moment I do not see it.
“What is clear is that electrification is the technology chosen by politicians, not by industry,” he summarizes.
For manufacturers, it is a question of "limiting the 50% additional cost of electricity as much as possible, in five years", with significant productivity gains.
"We will see in a few years the builders who will have survived and the others", predicts the boss of Stellantis.
"Without a gradual transition, the social consequences will be major," he fears.
"But we are not alone," he adds.
"We have a whole ecosystem of subcontractors around us. They will have to move as quickly as we do."
"It is the brutality of change that creates social risk", stresses Carlos Tavares.
© 2022 AFP