PSA Peugeot Citroen says it has launched a study to see whether or not it will continue its co-operation with Mitsubishi concerning electric vehicles as it looks to potentially place more emphasis on hybrid models.
The move appears to have been prompted by PSA’s appointment of new CEO, Carlos Tavares, who swiftly outlined a ‘Back in the Race’ plan that will see the model line-up slashed to 26 vehicles, around half today’s number.
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“We will start a study for a year and at the end of that study, we will decide whether we will keep on working with Mitsubishi for electric engines or we will do that internally, just PSA alone or new partner,” a PSA spokeswoman told just-auto from Paris.
“It has been a long time we have been working with them [Mitsubishi] and we have a new director [Tavares who] comes from a company where they were very big on electric [cars].
“Maybe they want to make a benchmark on different partners, different companies that are working on electric vehicles.”
PSA added Mitsubishi is aware of the study being undertaken by the French automaker, following confirmation of its existence by Tavares to France’s National Assembly or Parliament recently.
However, a hint of PSA’s future thinking can possibly be gleaned by its comments on hybrid rather than pure electric technology.
“PSA is more looking to develop hybrid technology than only 100% electric technologies,” said the spokeswoman.
“In this hybrid technology, we have got one that is gasoline or fuel and the other one is electric or hybrid, or something else.”
The ‘Back in the Race’ plan aims to achieve a 2% operating margin in the operating division by 2018, with a target of 5% during the next medium-term plan covering 2019-2023.
Earlier this year, France’s Finance Minister, pledged there would be no closures of domestic PSA factories, following the announcement Paris would inject EUR800m (US$1.08bn) of public money into the automaker.
The French State will become a 14% shareholder of PSA along with a similar capital increase from Chinese partner, Dongfeng, as a total of EUR3bn is raised to aid the manufacturer, which had an operating loss of EUR177m for last year.
