Stellantis held its first virtual annual general meeting today. The company publicised worldwide annual and audit reports of the FCA and PSA groups. It also announced the future direction of the company while emphasising electric vehicles. Stellantis will begin utilising the second generation of its eCMP (Common Modular Platform) across its vehicle range from late 2022.
The ‘e’ in the eCMP depicts that the company aims to start electrifying its vehicles intensively as the platform will focus on battery-electric vehicles. This second-generation platform will be shared across the A, B, and C category of cars that fall under the brand. The small cars will utilise this platform to accommodate mild-hybrid, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid systems in the cars.
This new generation of eCMP platform is expected to make its way to India and it could be localised in some or other way to control the costs. Under Stellantis, the architecture is likely to underpin several FCA and PSA brands such as Citroën and Jeep. The C21 compact SUV has been spied testing in India and while the current model is expected to be launched later this year, it will use the CMP platform. This new plan could see future versions being built on the eCMP platform. The eCMP platform will be the dawn of a new fully electric vehicle platform from Stellantis, named Stla.
This modular architecture is said to have several benefits, such as one platform can be used to make different body style passenger cars, for instance, compact sedan as well as compact SUVs, on the other hand, it will allow having internal combustion vehicles and hybrid vehicles on the same production line, and lastly, vehicles built on this platform can adapt to various global markets.
Most automobile manufacturer makes use of modular platforms, namely, Renault and Nissan CMF-A, Volkswagen and Skoda- MQB A0-IN, and finally, Tata uses the Alpha and Omega Architectures.