The profitability of electric vehicles is a big talking point nowadays, and for good reason. Automakers that haven't managed to turn a profit on their EV models yet are struggling at the moment, with many announcing a slowdown in the implementation of their electrification plans in recent months.
Basically, pretty much everyone outside Tesla is struggling to make their EV operations profitable, but it looks like Stellantis is also on the right path. CEO Carlos Tavares said on December 6 that the automaker is "in the black" on electric vehicles in the United States and Europe, according to Automotive News.
Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference, Tavares said automakers need to be "super sharp on cost" to achieve good profits on EVs. At the same time, he noted that carmakers have to attract middle-class consumers, and they can only do that by offering EVs that are affordable to buy and profitable to make.
The only way to make that happen is to reduce cost, and Tavares said Stellantis is "reasonably good" at that. "The fact that we try continuously to levelize the margins between BEVs and ICE is not new. We have been working on that for several years now, and I would say that we are achieving results," Tavares said.
Gallery: 2024 Jeep Recon
"The first thing is that we are in the black, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Our margins on electrified vehicles are in the black. That's a good thing. We are closing the gap against ICE faster in Europe than in U.S. because we started sooner, but we are achieving results and we see that all of this is going to be exciting."
Selling EVs profitably in Europe and the U.S. is an important development for Stellantis at a time when most automakers are faced with mounting losses from their EV operations.
The fact that Stellantis is more advanced building EVs profitably in Europe is obvious in the sales charts, where the Franco-Italo-American carmaker is "fighting head-on" with Tesla, according to Tavares. Stellantis recently overtook Tesla as Europe's No. 2 EV seller behind Volkswagen Group, CFO Natalie Knight said.
Tavares noted that the forthcoming Citroën e-C3, which starts at 23,300 euros ($25,100) in France, will be a profitable vehicle despite the low price for an EV. The small electric car is built on the company's low-cost "smart car" platform.
Learn more about Stellantis' electrification plans
Stellantis aims to sell more than 75 battery-electric models worldwide by 2030, of which more than 25 in the United States. The automaker is currently absent from the U.S. EV market, with zero fully electric models on sale in its home region.
However, it said it would launch five BEVs in the near future: the Ram ProMaster van (by end of 2023), the Fiat 500e (early 2024), the Ram 1500 REV (Q4 2024), the Jeep Recon, the Jeep Wagoneer S, and the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT muscle car, with the last three expected sometime in 2024.