You may have heard by now that French automaker PSA Group plans to sell vehicles in the United States once again after a nearly 30-year absence but is starting first with “mobility.” As part of a three-phase plan, the company launched its Free2Move mobility aggregation platform in Seattle last year, and the next phases include adding its vehicles to different car-sharing services and then finally retailing its wares. Larry Dominique, president and CEO of PSA North America, told attendees at the National Auto Dealers Association convention in Las Vegas, “Our launch as a mobility service shouldn’t overshadow our core business: We are a car manufacturer.”
As a global automaker, PSA Group is absent from two prominent markets: India and the United States. Its planned re-entry into the States is on a 10-year plan, but Dominique said he has group CEO Carlos Tavares’s blessing to begin offering cars whenever he feels the market is ready. When C/D asked Dominique which models could be coming, he declined to give specifics. “We’ve chosen a brand, but it’s too early to talk about it,” he said. Could it be Peugeot" Citroën" Might PSA troll General Motors and sell Opels here" Actually, that third option, while perhaps the least exciting, is not so unlikely. One of the advantages Tavares noted after the PSA Group acquired the brands from GM for $1.4 billion last year is that Opel engineers can ?ensure the futur...