Jeep to launch first electric car

It will not be alone. Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram and Vauxhall – along with Jeep collectively the Stellantis family – have now all committed to a group-wide electrification strategy that will see 75 battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) selling five million units a year by 2030.

Four years before then, from 2026, all new Stellantis group models launched in Europe will be pure-electric, while the path to nothing-but-electric will be set in 2025 when the premium brands Alfa, Lancia, Maserati and DS all reinvent their model ranges to be sans piston power. 

The switch will be slower in the US but with Jeep leading the way with its debut electric SUV, closely followed by an electric Ram 1500 pickup due in 2024, Stellantis boss Carlos Tavares says half of all the group’s car and light truck sales in the US will be electric by 2030. 

The grand plan is called Dare Forward 2030 and aims to cut group carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 on the road to being net-zero by 2038. “Dare Forward 2030 inspires us to become so much more than we’ve ever been," said Tavares. “Stellantis will be the industry champion in climate-change mitigation.”

With the world’s most eclectic family of vehicles all under the single umbrella, “diversity” is cited as the empowering force behind the mammoth switchover. Making a component-share work with brands from Vauxhall to Maserati, Abarth to Dodge, when you have 170 nationalities working for you and sell across six global regions would test the mettle of any multinational superpower.

Each brand has to make more of a profit while they are slashing carbon emissions, says the Stellantis chief executive, on the way to the group doubling net revenues by 2030. Just the  €300 billion a year then. One factor in this that we are likely to notice is more online sales: of those predicted five million electric vehicles a year by  2030, Stellantis wants a third of them to be bought with a click of the mouse. 

Tavares’ presentation this week was big on the business of electrification but more restrained in telling us about the sexy new cars that we most want to hear about. Apart, that is, from a very chunky, very yellow Jeep 4x4… A sign of things to come? You bet.