PSA will team up with Indian industrialist auntie to design low-cost vehicles for emerging countries, according to the newspaper Les Echos. He added that Carlos Tavares spent three days there in mid-April to oversee the progress of a program based on the development of a new platform dedicated to a manufacturing price twice as low as France. Les Echos also recall that the chairman of the executive board of PSA indicated, at the end of April at the general meeting of the group, that “theIndia will be the point of convergence and industrialization of the future family ‘smart cars’ “.
Return of the group to India
India’s Economic Times newspaper reported in January that PSA has signed an agreement with TCS, an affiliate of the Indian conglomerate Tata. A year earlier, in January 2017, the French manufacturer had signed two joint venture agreements with another Indian conglomerate, CK Birla, to return to India, a high-growth market it had left twenty years earlier. A spokesman for PSA confirmed the agreement with TCS, while stressing that the return of the group in India relied mainly on the partnership with CK Birla.
“In particular, PSA solicited TCS, but given its status as a new entrant in the Indian market, the group is likely to surround itself with other consulting firms,” he added.
The low cost, a new adventure for PSA
Contrary to Renault, PSA has never tried the adventure of low cost, fearing for a long time to compromise the upmarket strategy of its brands. To conquer some emerging countries, especially around the Mediterranean, it has so far opted for an intermediate solution by offering more affordable vehicles, such as Peugeot 301 or the Citroën C-Elysée.
At Renault, the low cost range – whose history goes back to the first Logan launched 14 years ago – has become a true weapon of conquest around the world. With this experience, the diamond group went even further with an ultra low cost car, Kwid, marketed since 2015 in India and since last summer at Brazil.
With Reuters (Gilles Guillaume, edited by Pascale Denis)