Jean-Marc Gales, Executive Vice President Brands of PSA Peugeot Citroën and Ferdinando Beccalli-Falco, President of GE Europe and North Asia and CEO of Germany, signed a technology and commercial cooperation agreement to collaborate towards establishing reliable and innovative business models for Electrical Mobility.
Through this non-exclusive and renewable agreement, GE and PSA Peugeot Citroën seek to develop a new EV mobility offer in Europe that will enable B2B customers to fully integrate EVs in their fleets and operate them with state of the art solutions..
Both companies intend to cooperate in the creation of an EV Customer Experience Center in France that will promote the implementation of projects to demonstrate the economic, commercial and technological challenges at stake. GE Energy's Industrial Solutions will supply and deploy the infrastructure products needed to make the projects possible, in particular charging stations and installer network. Moreover, both groups will collaborate towards deploying a joint commercial offer for PSA Peugeot Citroën customers that would include an EV and the relative charging infrastructure.
As a sign of its engagement in the EV sector, GE has shown interest in buying from PSA Peugeot Citroën up to 1,000 EVs by the end of 2015 for all of Europe.
PSA Peugeot Citroën has been manufacturing and selling electric vehicles under Peugeot and Citroën brands since 1995 and markets the recently launched Citroën C-ZERO and Peugeot iOn. GE provides commercial car and truck financing and integrated fleet management services for various consumers though its Fleet Services operations, a business within GE Capital. GE Energy's Industrial Solutions produces equipment to support cleaner, smarter and more efficient electrical infrastructure, such as EV charging.
At the signing of this partnership, Mr Beccalli stated: "GE is delighted to ally our commercial and technological expertise in infrastructure and energy with the knowledge and market position of PSA in EVs. In order to propose efficient solutions to our customers, neither GE nor PSA can just propose only the car, but need to think at larger scale and provide combined solutions which emphasize our strengths."
Jean Marc Gales added: "Our strategy is to offer to each of our customers the low-CO2-emitting technology adapted to their individual mobility needs. Through our agreement with GE, we will considerably ease the access to electric mobility for our customers, especially commercial customers»
About PSA Peugeot Citroën
With its two world-renowned brands, Peugeot and Citroën, the Group sold 3 600 000 vehicles worldwide in 2010, including almost 40% outside Europe. As Europe's second largest carmaker, it turned over 56.1 billion € in 2010.
PSA Peugeot Citroën has sales offices in 160 countries and employs 198 000 people worldwide. In 2010, it dedicated 2.1 billion € to research and development, especially in new energies. PSA Peugeot Citroën has also developed financing activities (Banque PSA Finance), logistics (Gefco) and automotive equipment (Faurecia).
About GE
GE (NYSE: GE) is an advanced technology, services and finance company taking on the world's toughest challenges. Dedicated to innovation in energy, health, transportation and infrastructure, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.ge.com.
