Automotive News Europe - September 2019 - 3

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS

Green champions
S

ensing the rising concern over what
has now been branded a "climate
emergency," Europe's automakers are
hoping to ditch their image as polluters
and go green. Starting with CO2-neutral
plants modeled on the likes of Audi's etron EV plant in Belgium, the ultimate
goal is to eventually operate "zero-impact
factories" that leave no ecological footprint. "We don't need one strategy for
running our business and a separate one
for sustainability," Daimler CEO Ola Källenius said. "We need our business model
itself to be sustainable." Our cover story
looks at the steps automakers are taking
to achieve this goal (Pages 6-8).
Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson is more
convinced than ever that the automaker
needs to capitalize on the disruptive
movements taking place in the industry.
He tell us how Volvo aims to gain from
electric and autonomous cars (Page 10).
Emilio Herrera, who has been chief operating officer of Kia Europe for 15 months,
is keeping Kia on a growth path despite a
steady decline in the region's overall vehicle sales. Maintaining this pace is about
to get tougher as Kia implements an ambitious plan to electrify its lineup (Page 12).
After buying Lotus in 2017, China's Zhejiang Geely Holding promised to invest billions of dollars to turn the struggling UK
sports car maker into a rival to Porsche or
Maserati. The first fruit of that promise arrived when Lotus unveiled the full-electric

The 2019 Eurostars
T

he executives who are this year's
Eurostars have stood out from
their rivals by exceeding expectations.
Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess
changed the dialog on Europe's largest automaker by aggressively pushing
into the electric era. Opel CEO Michael
Lohscheller did what seemed impossible: making the German volume brand
profitable after decades of losses. Kia
Europe boss Emilio Herrera has the Korean automaker on pace to keep grow-

ing in a declining
European market. Rolls-Royce
CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös led the
launch of the ultraluxury brand's
first SUV, the
Cullinan, which
has the company on track to set a new
all-time sales high in 2019. Meet all the
2019 Eurostars on Pages 24-34.

Evija hypercar in July. The car is a $2 million statement of intent, but Lotus CEO
Phil Popham knows the hard part will be
transforming the brand into a global player (Page 14).

We examine the pros and cons of both
strategies (Pages 16-17).

Volkswagen Group will build MEB-based
full-electric cars in eight locations globally starting in 2022 and predicts it will
sell 15 million vehicles on the platform
in the next decade. But, if it doesn't
succeed, the automaker's 7 billion
euro bet on MEB could be a major disaster. That is why BMW, Jaguar Land
Rover and PSA Group have rejected
VW Group's solution of a stand-alone
EV platform. Instead, they are creating
flexible platforms that encompass both
combustion and electric drivetrains.

Opel aims to deliver a small, punchy and
affordable electric car when it launches
a full-electric version of its small hatchback. The Corsa-e is the brand's first battery-powered vehicle developed since becoming part of the PSA Group (Page 22).
Polestar's engineering and marketing
teams know the stakes are very high with
the brand's debut model. That is why the
experts have spent countless hours making the final adjustments to the Polestar
1. We take a ride in the powerful plug-in
hybrid, which also offers an electric-only
range of 125km (Page 23).
Continental hasn't yet spun off its powertrain division -- to be called Vitesco
Technologies -- but the supplier is already
preparing for a transition to electrification
from internal combustion engines. We
look at what that means for the megasupplier (Page 36).
Over the past decade, the greatest strategic strength of BMW, Mercedes-Benz
and other German automakers has been
their dominant share of the dynamic
Chinese auto market. Suddenly that advantage has become a disadvantage. We
explain why in our Final Word (Page 58).
Enjoy the issue!

Electrified vehicles will take center stage at this year's Frankfurt auto
show. Ford is expected to show mild-hybrid versions of the new Puma
small SUV (shown) along with mild hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions of
the new Kuga. See which other models are poised to shine on Pages 18-20.

SEPTEMBER 2019

Luca Ciferri,
Associate Publisher and Editor

www.autonewseurope.com

http://www.autonewseurope.com

Automotive News Europe - September 2019

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