Stellantis's write-down equals 37% of its product plan, and Leapmotor is the admission

A board can defend a slow turnaround for as long as it can name something that will be provably true or false by a date. The May plan does not supply one. It promises 60 new models by 2030 and 60 billion euros to build them ^[12], and it takes 800,000 units out of European capacity without identifying a plant, while cancelling no brand at all ^[13]. That document cannot be graded for years. The market grades in hours: the February disclosure and last month's profit miss compound to roughly a 32% fall between them ^[19], most of the damage from two announcements rather than a slow drift.

The funding split is where the patience runs out. If 70% of the 60 billion euros goes to Jeep, Ram, Peugeot and Fiat ^[14], each core brand gets about 10.5 billion euros over five years and the other ten average about 1.8 billion euros apiece ^[17]. Felipe Munoz of Car Industry Analysis says more than ten of the brands need new products quickly ^[21]. Under 2 billion euros per brand does not buy new products; it buys a facelift and a regional shelf, which is close to what Inovev describes when it says DS and Lancia will pass under the direct control of Citroen and Fiat and lose their independence ^[15].

Now set the write-down against that same budget. The 22.2 billion euro charge disclosed in February, taken mainly because the company misjudged the speed of the EV switch ^[2], is about 37% of the entire five-year product spend ^[18]. Shareholders paid for a product cycle's worth of engineering and hold a charge instead of cars.

Which is why buying beats building here, and why the CEO has stopped pretending otherwise. Under the deepening alliance, Leapmotor and Dongfeng would supply the EV technology and take up idle Stellantis factory capacity in Europe, either for their own products or for the same products wearing Stellantis badges ^[7]. Analysts applaud it as the fast route to the affordable, competitive EVs Stellantis needs in Europe ^[6]. It also means the cheap end of the European range becomes someone else's engineering assembled in Stellantis buildings, and no timetable exists for taking that competence back in-house. Antonio Filosa told reporters the company is on track and executing as fast as possible ^[5]; the alliance is the part of that sentence which is actually moving, because it does not require Stellantis to develop anything.

The scale being demanded of him is Volkswagen's: threatened layoffs of 100,000 workers and four plant closures ^[16]. Against that, an unnamed 800,000 units is a slide. And the boundary case is Maserati, where Inovev says BYD could bid as early as this year, with BYD declining to comment ^[20]. A group that cannot fund ten brands eventually sells the ones a Chinese buyer values more than it does.