Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Peugeot is far too small in China
There is only one market really booming in the world and that is China, pity Peugeot only has a very small market share there.
Nicolas Wertans, deputy managing director of the Peugeot brand at Europe’s second-biggest carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen, recently went to Beijing.
“It is the only market that is still booming, at more than 70 percent month-on-month,” he told the Reuters Automotive Summit. “In fact, China came to the rescue of the automotive world,” he said as all carmakers are boosting their sales in that market which is set to become the biggest in the world.
But Peugeot is rather small in China, with a market share of just 1.2/1.3 percent.
PSA in total has a share of 3.5 percent and chief executive Philippe Varin has said this needs to rise to at least 10 percent. To get there, Peugeot is working on a new model, especially designed for the Chinese market.
It will be a sedan, Wertans said, but he declined to give more details.
While China is well poised to expand the indigenous auto amanufacturing sector, China should seek to become the world’s foremost alternative energy developer of automobiles. China should eschew gasoline engines while developing the fuel cell. Chinese automobiles will then become world’s premium brands, and leave the gasoline engine to others with the inability to change.