Opel said it is still negotiating with Peugeot Citroen to develop a new car

According to the German "Business Week" reported on December 15, GM's Opel announced that it is still negotiating with the allies Peugeot Citroen to develop new cars. Prior to the merger of Opel and PSA Peugeot Citroen Automobile Business announced plans to abortion, outsiders believe that may jeopardize the alliance of GM and Peugeot.

Opel continues negotiations with PSA

On the 15th of December, Opel’s interim CEO Thomas Sedran said in an interview with BusinessWeek that he is still negotiating with PSA Peugeot Citroen on the joint development of new cars, but it does not involve joint production.

In response to reports that the media is not optimistic about the prospects for cooperation between the two parties, Sedland emphasized that both GM Opel and PSA Peugeot Citroën have benefited from cooperation. At present, the two groups have started joint procurement and are negotiating and developing new car projects. “I can Clearly refuting (the coalition rupture theory), the negotiations are in good condition. The advantages of (cooperative) operation and technology are so obvious that we can quickly reach an agreement on joint research and development of new vehicles."

On February 29 this year, GM's Opel and Peugeot Citroen allied. The alliance structure consists of two pillars: the first is to share automotive platforms, parts and modules, and to start cooperation in the field of small and medium sized cars, multi-purpose vehicles and cross-border vehicles in advance; and second, to jointly establish a global procurement joint venture company to supply Commercial offices purchase various types of finished products, parts and components, and other product services. The combined purchasing power of the two parties can reach US$125 billion. The two companies will remain independent and sell vehicles under their respective brands and distribution networks.

The two companies plan to develop four series of new cars from 2016 to 2017: the subsequent models of the Zafira MPV, two compact vehicles and a medium-sized vehicle that will replace the Opel Insignia/Citroen C5.

Sedland denied the allegation of joint production: "We have not yet negotiated on this. We first hope to complete the joint development of the new car project and put the new car on the market around 2016 to 2017."

On October 24th, PSA Peugeot Citroen and GM announced that they will promote strategic cooperation between the two sides globally, jointly develop four new car projects, and build a joint procurement organization. The statement confirmed the GM’s filings with the SEC on March 5. The latter mentioned that it will jointly develop four new cars with PSA Peugeot Citroen.

1、Compact car

The two companies jointly created a compact MPV for Opel/Vauxhall and a compact crossover for the Peugeot brand.

Foreign media previously reported that the two companies have started to collaborate on the development of two or more new passenger vehicles from the fall of 2012. The new models may be launched in the global market in 2016. The first model released will be a mini vehicle for the South American market. . The German "Le Monde" also reported that General Motors and PSA Peugeot Citroen will jointly build a new platform, in the future will be based on the annual production of 2 million small cars, mainly for the Latin American market. However, Varan gave a different view, which indicates that the first new car jointly launched in 2016 is more likely to use the existing platform, or based on the current chassis and parts design development, rather than completely build from scratch.

Foreign media further speculated that the next generation of Peugeot 208 and Chevrolet Spare may share platforms. GM's small car development center in Korea or to take the opportunity to cooperate with PSA Peugeot Citroen, Chevrolet Spark, Opel Corsa and other general-purpose small cars with the Peugeot 208, Citroen C3 share the probability of the platform. The modified Peugeot 208 will enter the market in April this year, while the Corsa modified by the Korea Small Vehicle Development Center will be launched in 2014.

2, small MPV

The two parties will jointly create a small MPV for the Opel/Vauxhall and Citroen brand to replace the Opel Zafira MPV.

Max Warburton, an analyst at Bernstein Research in London, pointed out: "They (PSA Peugeot Citroen and General Motors) must decide in the future whether to build a small car on a platform in the center of Korea, or based on The PSA Peugeot Citroën developed on the platform. The former may spend less than R&D in Europe.”

If the European market, the Peugeot Citroen platform is more appropriate. The reason is that the EU has tightened its emissions and fuel efficiency. It requires an average fuel economy of 44.5 mpg by 2015 and a further increase to 60.9 mpg by 2020. In this case, PSA Peugeot Citroën invested a lot of cost to develop high-performance small car technology is very necessary.

If other markets, such as China, South Korea, and Latin America, are faced with standards that are less stringent than those in Europe, excessive technology will be redundant and costly, so GM Korea may dominate the development of global Class B vehicles. With the sales volume of PSA Peugeot Citroen, GM’s future global compact car/European standard B-class vehicle sales will reach 2.7 million units. Currently, only Hyundai-Kia’s compact/mini-car sales have reached this scale.

A GM spokesperson said: "Our negotiations will not cause any damage to GM's operations in South Korea." This also means that GM hopes to maintain the original development dominance of small cars.

3, low-emission small car platform

The alliance will develop a new low carbon dioxide emission compact car platform for the next generation of Opel/Vauxhall and PSA Peugeot Citroen vehicles. The new car will be sold in Europe and other regions in the future.

4, medium-sized car

The two companies jointly developed medium-sized vehicles for Opel, Vauxhall, Peugeot and Citroen.

The German "Le Monde" pointed out that General Motors and PSA Peugeot Citroen may be based on the Opel / Vauxhall Insignia midsize car Epsilon platform, based on the development of new medium and large cars. Insignia was designed based on the old Epsilon platform, and General Motors has updated the Epsilon platform.

According to the previous PSA Peugeot Citroen plan, the next-generation midsize car will replace the Citroen C5 around 2015. The cooperation between the two sides in the medium-sized car may be earlier than the compact car, because of the lack of scale conditions of Opel and PSA Peugeot Citroen. In the European market, Volkswagen sold 246,000 Passats last year, while the Citroen C5 and Peugeot 508 had only 147,000 vehicles, and Insignia had only 140,000 vehicles.

General Motors and PSA Peugeot Citroen plan to launch the first new car of the project by the end of 2016. All four major projects will adopt the most advanced platform architecture and technology of both parties.