DETROIT -- Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said external pressure on automakers to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles potentially threatens jobs and vehicle quality as producers struggle to manage the higher costs of building EVs.
Governments and investors want car manufacturers to speed up the transition to EVs, but the costs are "beyond the limits" of what the auto industry can sustain, Tavares said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference released Wednesday.
"What has been decided is to impose on the automotive industry electrification that brings 50 percent additional costs against a conventional vehicle," he said.
"There is no way we can transfer 50 percent of additional costs to the final consumer because most parts of the middle class will not be able to pay."
Automakers could charge higher prices and sell fewer cars, or accept lower profit margins, Tavares said. Those paths both lead to cutbacks.
Union leaders in Europe and North America have warned tens of thousands of jobs could be lost.
Automakers need time for testing and ensuring that new technology will work, Tavares said. Pushing to speed that process up "is just going to be counter productive. It will lead to quality problems. It will lead to all sorts of problems," he said.
Tavares said Stellantis is aiming to avoid cuts by boosting productivity at a pace far faster than industry norm.
"Over the next five years we have to digest 10 percent productivity a year ... in an industry which is used to delivering 2 to 3 percent productivity" improvement, he said.
"The future will tell us who is going to be able to digest this, and who will fail," Tavares said. "We are putting the industry on the limits."
EV costs are expected to fall, and analysts project that battery electric vehicles and combustion vehicles could reach cost parity during the second half of this decade.
Like other automakers that earn profits from combustion vehicles, Stellantis is under pressure from EV maker Tesla and other full-electric vehicle startups such as Rivian.
The EV companies are far smaller in terms of vehicle sales and employment. But investors have given Tesla and Rivian higher market valuations than the owner of the Jeep SUV brand or the highly profitable Ram pickup truck franchise.
That investor pressure is compounded by government policies aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union, California and other jurisdictions have set goals to end sales of combustion vehicles by 2035. The UK has set 2030 as the deadline for going all-electric.
Tavares said governments should shift the focus of climate policy toward cleaning up the energy sector and developing electric-vehicle charging infrastructure.
Stellantis is on track to deliver $5.7 billion in cost reduction through streamlining its operations, Tavares said.
Tavares has accelerated Stellantis' EV development, committing $34 billion through 2025 to developing new EV architectures, building battery plants and investing in raw materials and new technology.
On Tuesday, Stellantis said it had invested in solid-state battery startup Factorial alongside Daimler.
"We can invest more and go deeper in the value chain," Tavares said. "There may be other (investments) in the near future."
