Stellantis Cuts 800,000 European Units

Stellantis, the world's fourth-largest carmaker and owner of Peugeot, Fiat, Jeep and Opel, set out a €60 billion turnaround plan on 21 May that sends most of its money to North America and shifts spare European factory capacity towards Chinese partners. The plan, called FaSTLAne 2030, shows how Europe's car industry is being pulled between American profit margins and Chinese vehicle platforms.

Of the €36 billion set aside for brands and products, 60% goes to North America (CNBC). Jeep, Ram, Peugeot and Fiat take 70% of brand investment (Autoblog). European names such as Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Opel and Citroën are being pushed down to "regional" status, which means fewer models, less capital and no serious global role (Stellantis Media).

CEO Antonio Filosa presents the move as a survival plan. Stellantis posted a net loss of roughly €20 billion in the second half of 2025 (FleetPoint), driven by €22.2 billion in write-downs, effectively admitting that cancelled EV platforms had lost their value (SEC filing). By 2030, the company wants €190 billion in revenue and a 7% operating margin, the share of revenue left as profit after production costs (StockTitan).

Why the Money Goes West

The pull towards America is not sentimental. It is built into the numbers.

Industrial electricity in the EU costs more than twice the US price. Even French wholesale power, the cheapest among the large EU economies, was roughly 52% above American levels in early 2025 (IEA, IEA Mid-Year Update). Germany and Italy pay more again.

US tariffs of 25% on imported vehicles make local production the practical route into the American market. Stellantis is reopening Belvidere, Illinois for Jeep and expanding Toledo, Ohio for trucks, with a target of 80% US capacity utilisation by 2030 (CNBC). North American operations have historically delivered 8-10% operating margins, compared with 3-5% in Europe. Capital is moving towards the stronger return.

For Malta, which buys cars rather than builds them, the effect will not be seen in closed factory gates. It will be felt through model choice, delivery times, prices and the speed at which cheaper Chinese-built electric vehicles enter the European market under familiar or EU-compliant labels.

Europe Becomes a Chinese Assembly Hub

The plan removes 800,000 units of annual capacity in Europe while promising no factory closures. The mechanism is simple: instead of shutting underused plants, Stellantis is opening them to Chinese manufacturers.

In France, the Rennes factory is being opened to a joint venture with Dongfeng, a state-backed Chinese carmaker. The Poissy plant near Paris will lose its assembly line by 2028, putting 500-600 direct jobs at risk (Le Monde). The CGT union estimates another 6,000-8,000 jobs could be exposed in the wider supply chain (BASTA! Media).

In Spain, the Madrid plant is being transferred outright to Leapmotor, a Chinese EV maker (Cinco Días). Italian plants ran at just 23% of capacity in 2025 (Il Fatto Quotidiano), and Giorgia Meloni's government is actively courting Chinese manufacturers to fill the gap.

Germany's Opel shows that this is about more than assembly. Stellantis is cutting Rüsselsheim's engineering centre from 1,650 to 1,000 engineers, a 40% reduction (Handelsblatt). The new Opel SUV will use a Leapmotor platform. Stellantis is not only exporting production volume. It is allowing engineering weight to move with it.

The Wider Supplier Retreat

Stellantis is the clearest case, but the pattern is wider. German suppliers are cutting jobs on an industrial scale: Bosch plans 13,000 cuts by 2030, ZF is eliminating 14,000 by 2028 after a €2.1 billion loss in 2025, and Continental is cutting more than 10,000 positions (ad-hoc-news.de). An IG Metall survey found that 72% of German auto suppliers plan to delay domestic investment (Verbandsbüro).

The EU response relies on grants and loans through programmes such as the Net-Zero Industry Act. These move more slowly than the direct tax credits that helped pull investment into the United States (Cleantech Group). The original US consumer EV credits expired in September 2025 (NPR), but the tariff wall and energy gap remain.

Spain alone expects to produce roughly 450,000 Chinese-brand vehicles a year by 2030 (El País). These cars will carry "Made in EU" labels, avoid EU tariffs on Chinese imports, and employ European workers on Chinese platforms, with Chinese engineering and Chinese cost structures. Europe is providing the labour and the tariff shield. The technology and the margins are settling somewhere else.