Electric cars in the USA: Stellantis pulls the plug.Image: AP
02/09/2026, 08:4202/09/2026, 09:04
The Opel parent company Stellantis slipped deep into the red last year due to an expensive conversion away from its US electric car course. Now the dividend is being canceled.
The bottom line is that the company suffered a loss of 19 to 21 billion euros, as the company, which also includes the Fiat, Peugeot and Chrysler brands, announced on Friday based on preliminary figures. The huge hole is due to the reversal of the strategy, which caused Stellantis a write-off of 22.2 billion euros.
The shift in strategy can be seen in the future models. In the USA, the purely electric RAM 1500 pick-up has been canceled. The model again gets a V8 engine. The Jeep Cherokee is also coming back.
Like Ford, the Stellantis brand RAM is also scrapping its purely electric pick-up and relying on combustion engines again.Image: keystone
Trump canceled e-car funding
Almost 15 billion euros of this will go towards the turnaround in electric cars in the important US market. The company is discontinuing models after US President Donald Trump canceled electric car funding and changed emissions guidelines. This means that Stellantis will probably earn less money in the future.
Sales, on the other hand, are likely to have increased to 78 to 80 billion euros. That would be an increase of 8 to 11 percent compared to the previous year.
Shares lose significantly
The shares fell sharply. At the start of trading on the Paris stock exchange on Friday, the stock lost almost a fifth and temporarily fell to a record low. The day before, the price had already lost almost six percent.
For the turnaround, Stellantis will also have to pay out financial resources amounting to 6.5 billion euros over the next few years – management therefore does not want to pay a dividend to shareholders this year. The company also wants to raise fresh money of up to 5 billion euros by issuing new bonds in order to strengthen its balance sheet.
Problems in the USA
The reorganization of the strategy is not unexpected for the multi-brand group (including Citroën, Fiat, Peugeot, Chrysler, Jeep, Alfa Romeo, Opel) with its strong US foothold – the big ones US competitor Ford and General Motors For their part, they had already written off billions because of the US government’s change in electric car policy.
However, Stellantis is hit in a critical phase: the company was caught in a maelstrom of weak sales and falling prices in the USA and had to take expensive countermeasures. Former boss Carlos Tavares lost his job because of this. North America has typically been where the company has made the lion’s share of its profits.
According to the announcement, the new boss Antonio Filosa sees the first signs of improvement: In the second half of 2025, sales rose by 11 percent year-on-year to 2.8 million vehicles.
In Europe, Stellantis will continue to focus on electric cars with brands such as Citroën, Fiat, Peugeot and Opel. In Europe, electric vehicles now have a market share of 20 percent, while in the USA they have less than 10 percent. The EU is making the sale of new combustion cars increasingly uneconomical with ever stricter CO₂ regulations. Trump, on the other hand, has relaxed the guidelines for the auto industry. There are no longer any incentives to rely on electric cars in the USA.
(sda/awp/dpa/oli)