The PSA Group, which includes Peugeot and Citroen, has revealed its electric vehicle (EV) roadmap by creating a dedicated unit called the Low Emission Vehicles Business Unit. What does this mean for Peugeot concretely?
PSA Gets Serious About EVs
In a nutshell, the Low Emission Vehicles Business Unit will be focused on developing electric mobility products for the group’s entire range by 2025. Although late to the table, the unit will define and deploy the global EV strategy with its associated products and services throughout the PSA Group. The head of the unit Alexandre Guignard, senior vice president of the business unit, he will report to Linda Jackson, CEO of Citroën.
According to Jackson, “The energy transition is an opportunity that our company has seized by launching an unprecedented technological offensive made possible by out multi-energy platforms. … The challenge for this business unit, which benefits from an experience built up over several years within forthe group, will be to provide the best vehicles at the best time to satisfy our customers and thereby ensure the best economic conditions for launching Groupe PSA’s electric vehicles into the market.”
From iOns To Homemade EVs
It took a while for the PSA Group to move on with the electrification of its cars. Although its past fling with Mitsubishi gave it access to the i-MiEV platform, which PSA rebranded as iOn for Peugeot and CO for Citroen, we wished it would have gotten an earlier start. Understandably, though, it was looking to secure funds in order to avoid bankruptcy not too long ago.
It not only makes strategic sense for the PSA Group to seriously focus its efforts on offering homegrown EVs at this late stage of the game. Almost all other carmakers in its range either have plans to offer an EV or are working them, and Peugeot is now late to the game. It seems the only remaining bastion resisting the EV appeal is FIAT, which will have to follow suit (or die) as well. That’s another story.
Peugeot, PSA Group Face The Future With Electricity In The Air
Peugeot knows it has a narrow window of opportunity to strike the metal while it’s hot. By announcing the creation of a unit focusing on EVs, it can hope to compete in Europe against other carmakers who got a headstart with EVs. Peugeot will have to justify the funds to speed up its development process and catch up to other carmaker offering EVs before 2020, and a new business unit seems like just such a thing for that.
