Another part of Opel could trade hands by the end of this year. French automaker, PSA Groupe, is reportedly looking at selling off a portion of the German brand’s research and development unit, Le Monde newspaper reported, via Reuters, on Tuesday.
The sale of Opel’s R&D unit would include four sections of the department valued at $583 million: Vehicle Engineering, Propulsion Engineering, Tool & Die Operations and the test center. The sections also include Opel’s Russelsheim headquarters.
In total, 3,980 people are employed in the various departments and PSA Groupe has already approached four firms to potentially iron out a deal. Three firms are French and one is German.
PSA Groupe hopes to return the Opel unit to profitability in the coming years, and selling off the brand’s R&D unit would move the brand closer towards the black. With the possible sale, it’s clear PSA Groupe has few plans to keep Opel and Vauxhall models distinct from Peugeot or Citroen’s engineering.
General Motors closed the sale of Opel and Vauxhall to PSA in 2017, which effectively ended GM’s volume-selling business in Europe after decades.
The sweepstakes closes on December 22nd and the drawing will take place on December 28th.
At a time of year when luxury car ATP usually rises.
Sales decreased 5.6 percent to 16,670 units during the first ten months of 2024.
Specifically critical minerals supply chain development.
Scheduled for a Spring 2025 launch.
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GM can buy it know to use it for R&D.
Absolutely!
While the Opel interior's quality will be better than that of a Chevy (or caddy) interior or just for the expertise on the clean small cars, I always think it will be need to buy these R&D activities. Furthermore, GM always could have a link with the german universities and their research capacities: the US and Chinese universities don't find the all solutions!
They have nothing that GM already has or needs. You can be sure anything of value was kept by GM.
GM development is global today and each vehicle is built, engineered and developed 24/7 globally today. That is why Cadillac is testing down under and Corvettes are getting suspension developed from Europe.
The reason is that the ITDC[*] in Rüsselsheim was GM's second largest development center after Warren, and that GM used their development centers as being one unit, as global tech and design center, and not as the tech center of this or that subsidiary or brand. At least GM had moved to this in the course of the past decades; one element of that process was to abandon the "divisions", which had their own developments, so that GM had the riches of having an V8 say 5.5 L engine from Buick and a V8 sa 5.6 L engine from Chevrolet. Today there are no brand specific engines any more.
So, the Rüsselsheim ITDC had work for about 3000 of their people working on non-Opel GM business, e.g. the facelift of the Buick Lacrosse which had been talked about on this forum quite recently (see the licence plates starting with "GG", short for the county Gross Gerau, where Rüsselsheim is located.
These development contracts are running out, and it seems that no new contracts from Detroit are coming in. That's why there had been thougths at PSA in Paris (or rather Rueil-Malmaison, where the HQ had moved to some months ago) what to do with those mass of qualified engineers. Well they had known it even before the sale, but did not dare to talk about it publicly.
This article appeared in Le Monde the day when the company run "Opel Blog" (www.opel-blog.com) was putting out another article about their "TechDay" featuring the great work and capacities of the Opel Development center. It is based on an internal PSA document dated mid may, which was shown to a Le Monde journalist. Who did that and for what purpose is still unknown. May be that some people high up at PSA or members of the Peugeot family were dissatisfied with a too slow pace of diminishing the work force?
Its publication could not come at a worse moment for Opel.
The struggle between company and workers over wages and layoffs had calmed down after an agreement hat been struck (which included to postpone next year's wage increase), the ITDC was featured and the workers were told how many overall PSA competence centers were assigned to the Rüsselsheim ITDC, and then this bomb, that about half of the ITDC staff might be sold off to some outside engineering company.
I can't imagine how one could sell of parts of such a center. Separating out people who sit in the same building, in the next office. Strange.
Then the CEO is musing about possible "strategic partnerships". I had said them, why not continue a strategic partnership with General Motors? Maybe only in the field of LCV (Light Commercial Vehicles), like VW and Ford have just agreed do. GM USA has the competence for pickups, and PSA with Opel the competence for regular panel vans.
[*] ITCD = Interational Technical Development Center, in German ITEZ = Internationales Technisches Entwicklungszentrum.
GM is now a regional firm focused on the Americas & China after quitting Europe and one billion strong India.
Hopefully GM will repurchase the GME space given that German input has been critical for various GM platforms and designs.
In addition, GM can and should look towards Europe as well as other global markets by exercising PSA stock warrents and buying additional stock. Taveres is a fantastic CEO, has trasformed PSA into a growing profit center, and PSA could serve GM well as a growth engine much like Renault does via Nissan stock.
GM and PSA should form a purchasing as well as r&d alliance in this era of consolidation and the global automaker. Other companies with things to contribute should also be invited to join.
Lastly, Tavares has accomplished the near impossible first with PSA and now Opel. He should join the GM board and be considered as a future Barra replacement like Carlos Goshen with Renault and Nissan plus Mitsubishi.