In September this year, moreover, Stellantis had already inaugurated its first Battery Technology Center, in the Mirafiori industrial complex in Turin.
It is an investment of 40 million euros, for a centre (the largest in Italy and among the largest in Europe, with over 100 technicians) that will significantly increase Stellantis’s capacity to design, develop and test all the electric technology that will power the future vehicles of the Stellantis brands.
The group is also working on a Battery Technology Center for North America in Windsor, Ontario: it will be the second step towards a global network for the development and production of batteries that will include as many as six gigafactories.
The road, therefore, seems to have been taken decisively. And according to the Group’s statements, it is one that leads to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) making up 100% of sales in Europe and 50% of sales in the United States by the end of the decade, reaching annual global BEV sales of five million vehicles by 2030.
Convinced that there is no “single electrification strategy”, Stellantis’s design teams “are developing different platforms, propulsion systems and energy storage systems, capable of enhancing the DNA of each of our 14 brands”.
This translates into “a combination of four cutting-edge BEV platforms – STLA Small, Medium, Large and Frame – three electric drive modules (EDM) capable of offering modularity and performance, and two types of battery cells to guarantee prices within everyone’s reach”.
Stellantis assures us that “the combination of all these solutions will produce vehicles with top-of-the-industry performance, ranges of 500-800 kilometres/300-500 miles, and front-, rear- and all-wheel drive”.
The first of these innovative platforms is STLA Medium, presented to the public last July. STLA, the flagship of the company’s technological research, features “cutting-edge characteristics: over 700 km (435 miles) of range (the best in its class), and class-leading energy efficiency, on-board energy capacity and charging power”.
However, the commitment to electric declared by Stellantis is part of a broader picture of choices for sustainability, which bodes well.
On 23 November the group celebrated the opening of its SUSTAINera Circular Economy Hub (CE Hub), located within the Mirafiori complex in Turin.
On that occasion, chairman John Elkann announced a comprehensive plan to realise Stellantis’s ambitions in the field of the Circular Economy. It is a 360-degree approach based on the 4R strategy: Reman (remanufacturing), Repair, Reuse and Recycle.
The primary aim of this cutting-edge Circular Economy Hub, the executives said, “is to extend the life of components and vehicles, ensuring they last longer. When this is no longer possible, the material is collected for recycling from the remanufacturing and end-of-life vehicle dismantling activities, then reintroduced into the production cycle to create new parts and new vehicles”.
In the first phase, the Circular Economy Hub will host four activities, “implementing the 4R strategy with the aim of expanding further”.
