Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stalantis, held a press conference after meeting with the unions in Turin, Italy on March 31, 2022.
Massimo Pinka | Reuters
Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis, said he expects the shortage of batteries and raw materials needed to make electric vehicles in the coming years, as the global automotive industry moves toward EV to meet consumer demand and the expected growth of government regulations.
Tavares says he expects a shortage of EV batteries by 2024-2025, then a shortage of raw materials for vehicles that will slow down the availability and adoption of EVs by 2027-2028.
“The pace at which we are all trying to move together for the right reasons, which are solving the problem of global warming, is so great that there is no time to adjust the supply chain and production capacity,” he told the media after the agency on Tuesday. Indiana has announced a new $ 2.5 billion EV battery plant.
Stellantis, the world’s fourth-largest carmaker, was formed by Fiat Chrysler and France-based group PSA merging last year.
Tavares called on policymakers around the world to use the potential of a shortage to stop aggressively pursuing goals for EVR.
European regulators have been most aggressive in implementing the new EV regulations, with the UK announcing plans to ban the sale of vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines by 2030, sooner than the previous target date of 2040. The Biden administration last year also announced a goal of having half the EVs of all cars in the United States by the end of the decade.
“All car companies now, at least the best ones, are now at full speed; in full execution mode, they are going as fast as possible,” Tavares said. “The only thing that really helps deliver is stability. Stop playing with the rules. Leave the rules as they are and let people do the right thing.”
Tavares expects a break in the battery before, as more EV manufacturing centers come online. He then hopes that these facilities will create a shortage of raw materials for vehicles. Such deficits have been the focus of Wall Street analysts when it comes to rating automakers and predicting their ability to sell EVs.
This is not the first time that Tavares has warned of such a lack, but it is the most detailed.
“The point is, when we want to move very quickly with a large scale and not have enough feasibility studies, we can push on this kind of thing,” Tavares said. “You will see that the electrification path, which is a very ambitious one, is becoming a barrier to supply in a time window set by the administration.”
Automakers around the world have set sales expectations for moving to the end of this decade to exclusively offer EVs to specific brands, if not sooner.
Stellantis is investing $ 35 billion in EVs and expects to achieve annual sales of 5 million electric vehicles worldwide by 2030. This would include sales of all passenger cars in Europe and 50% of passenger car and light-duty truck sales in North America, in line with the government. The goal
