The new alliance between GM (General Motors) and PSA (Peugeot Citroen Alliance) brings two new cars to the market, at least on paper. Although just a few weeks passed since formalizing the partnership between GM and PSA, the two large car manufacturers already began to exchange employees with the purpose to make the cooperation successful.
GM CEO Dan Akerson says that he wants to develop at least two new passenger cars by the beginning of this fall. These cars would go into production in 2015 for the U.S. market and to the other automotive markets by 2016. Although there is great concern in PSA on the purchase of new materials and services, the head of GM said that joint projects could become more important due to the alliance. They want to produce a car that will fit in a small class and a larger sedan. The small class will be for sure sold on the European market, but this is not true for the sedan. Initially the focus will be on markets in South America and even the Chinese market will be considered, where currently the partner models are sold individually, while the local partnerships are well established and safe for both GM and PSA.
Both companies have manufacturing plants in Brazil and Argentina where they sell mainly small cars based on the models sold in Europe. It seems that in this region PSA wants to launch new models at the same time as on the European market and not afterward, as they did in the past. Development of two separate vehicles, but based on the same platform is expected to reduce the expenditures for the two companies by at least 25% for each project. Thus it appears that the 340 million dollars that GM has paid for 7% stake in French group PSA would be reflected in 2017 in $1 billion of savings, at least theoretically.
Once they reach a mutual agreement this fall in the production plans of the two new cars, unofficial sources say that the alliance wants to go further. They want to produce future crossover or MPV models.
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