'We Compare Ourselves To Tesla:' Stellantis CEO Reveals Bold EV Benchmark

Stellantis NV STLA CEO Carlos Tavares shed light on competition and benchmarks within the current EV industry in the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

What Happened: On the call, George Galliers from Goldman Sachs noted that the company, during the unveiling of its STLA Medium Platform, mentioned it has sector benchmark performance without revealing the benchmark for this analysis.

“To make it simple, we compare ourselves to Tesla,” the CEO replied. “We compare ourselves to the Koreans, mostly. But we always have an overview and there is nothing that we do right now in engineering in this company that is not aiming at being best-in-class.”

However, the trouble with such forecasting is that another player could provide better performance in the time taken to develop upon these forecasts, the CEO added.

Why It Matters: Earlier this month, Stellantis unveiled the STLA Medium — the first of four BEV platforms outlined on EV Day 2021. Stellantis said in a statement that the platform offers a best-in-class range of more than 700 km, charging time, performance, efficiency, affordability, and driving pleasure. Up to 2 million vehicles per year can be built on the platform, the company added.

The platform is key to Stellantis’ goal of becoming carbon net zero by 2038 with a 50% reduction by 2030. The company sees reaching annual BEV sales of 5 million by 2030.

For the first half, the company reported net revenues of €98.4 billion ($109.5 billion), up 12% year-on-year, thanks to higher shipments. The automaker also had a 37% increase in net profit to €10.9 billion.

Price Action: Stellantis shares closed up 3.6% on Wednesday at $19.17 and rose 3.1% pre-market on Thursday.

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