After being dormant for a month or more under coronavirus lockdowns, Europe's auto factories are slowly stirring to life.
Output initially will be a fraction of normal as workers and management learn new safety procedures. And demand remains a great unknown: Automakers are sitting on an additional month or more of inventory, and it's unclear how buyers will respond once restrictions are lifted.
Status of European plants:
Aston Martin: Output of the DBX SUV is scheduled to resume May 5 at the company's new factory in St. Athan, Wales.
BMW: BMW and Mini plants are expected to reopen May 4.
Daimler: Mercedes factories in Hungary are to reopen this week. Component plants have restarted in Germany, where assembly plants are to reopen this week.
Renault: Its huge Dacia factory in Romania plans to start building cars the first week of May. Powertrain assembly began last week.
Ferrari: Early May restart in Maranello and Modena, Italy, is planned.
Fiat Chrysler: Joint-venture factory in Italy that builds vans with PSA is set to reopen this week. Others are expected May 4.
Ford: Plants in Romania, Spain, Germany and Turkey plan to reopen May 4.
Jaguar Land Rover: Plants in Solihull, England, and Nitra, Slovakia, plan to resume production May 18.
Nissan: Barcelona, Spain, factory is scheduled to reopen May 4.
Analyst LMC Automotive said last week that European auto production would be down 98 percent in April and 75 percent in May.
Each automaker has its own safety procedures, but a broad consensus is emerging. Arriving workers will have their temperatures checked. They will be issued personal protective equipment, including masks, according to their job. Plastic sheets will separate workstations, if necessary, to maintain social distancing. Doors will be kept open and shift changes prolonged to allow for sanitizing.
Many cafeterias will be closed, and in one perhaps positive change, Toyota said it will limit the length of meetings and the number of participants.
Hyundai and Kia were the first to break the ice at the Korean brands' factories in eastern Europe. Kia resumed production April 6 of the Sportage compact crossover and Ceed compact car at its factory in Zilina, Slovakia, with two of three shifts. A week later, Hyundai started up its plant in Nosovice in the Czech Republic, where it builds the i30 compact car family, the Tucson compact crossover and the full-electric variant of the Kona subcompact crossover.
Last week Toyota reopened its factory in Valenciennes, France, where it builds the Yaris subcompact hatchback. It's building the last of the current-generation Yaris, with a new model coming this summer, as well as the new Yaris Cross SUV based on the same platform. Initially 50 vehicles a day will be made, compared with a typical output of 1,000.
Volvo restarted lines, on a slow cadence, on Monday, April 20, in Ghent, Belgium, where it builds the XC40 crossover and V60 station wagon, and Torslanda, Sweden, where it builds the XC90 and XC60 crossovers and the V90 station wagon.
VW Group has started lines at Zwickau, Germany, where it is building the crucial ID3 electric compact, and at a multi-brand factory in Bratislava, Slovakia. The rest of the group's plants will start up progressively this week.
Also this week, Renault will start building the Zoe electric car at its factory in Flins, France, where the Nissan Micra hatchback is built on the same line. Demand for the Zoe has been running at roughly twice 2019 levels as Europe's new, tighter emissions rules kick in. The rest of Renault's European plants will open in early May.
FCA wants to start lines this week at its Melfi, Italy, facility, union representatives said, to clear out space to work on the new Compass and Renegade plug-in hybrid EVs, according to a Reuters report. FCA officials would not confirm the report.
PSA Group has not yet set a formal date to open assembly plants, but production will be tightly monitored in an effort to control inventory, CFO Philippe de Rovira told analysts last week.
"Production will serve our order book," he said. "Our build-to-order will be very high — we won't build to stock."
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