- The Volkswagen and Ford groups have activated their global alliance after long months of negotiations, discussions having started as early as July 2019. If the common projects had already been mentioned by the two players, no concrete elements had been communicated so far. Today it’s done for some of them.

- Volkswagen and Ford will focus much of their cooperation on light utility vehicles (LUV). Three projects have been identified:

1.The first will concern the pick-up market and will be launched in 2022. Ford will take the lead here since the future VW Amarok will be based on the Ranger and will therefore be assembled alongside it in South Africa, at Silverton.

2.The second project will concern the production by Volkswagen, on behalf of Ford, of an urban delivery van which will this time be based on the new generation of Caddy unveiled in 2020. The future Ford Transit Connect and VW Caddy will therefore be produced in Poland, from the second half of 2020 for the new Caddy and from 2021 for the Ford.

3.Then will be added to the cooperation, a light utility vehicle that can go up to a ton of load. The project remains to be detailed, but it is confirmed that Ford will take the lead in the development and production. The idea is that the Transporter is developed and produced by the American carmaker and becomes a derivative of the Transit Custom.

- Passenger cars will also be on the cooperation program, in the strategic area of electrical vehicles. Ford will here benefit from Volkswagen's MEB platform in Europe to have zero emission products in its product range. The agreement is for the moment on a C-segment BEV (battery electric vehicles) which will be assembled by Ford in Cologne.

- The European automobile market for passenger cars (29 countries) fell 39% in the first quarter of 2020, compared to the same period in 2019. The decline increased in April compared to March, due to the containment of the more people in April than in March, and more factories and concessions closed in April than in March.

- The decrease in April reached -78.3% against -51.9% in March and -7.1% in February. With the unlock carried out in mid-May and the gradual reopening of factories and concessions, we can expect a less significant drop in May, of the order of -50% and a small recovery in June, so good that the first half of 2020 should end with a market down by around -33%.

- To achieve a decline of -25% over the whole year, it would be necessary to count on a European market of -15% in the second half, which does not seem unattainable.

- By manufacturer, there are from the least impacted to the most impacted: Toyota Group (-27.0%), BMW Group (-29.6%), Geely Group (-31.0%), Volkswagen Group (-33.2%) ) Hyundai-Kia Group (-33.9%), Tata Group (-36.0%), Daimler Group (-40.0%), Renault-Nissan Group (-44.7%), PSA Group (-45 , 8%), Ford Group (-47.4%), FCA Group (-47.9%). We note that the manufacturers most impacted are those who sell the most in the European countries most affected by the coronavirus, namely Italy (FCA), Spain (Renault and PSA), France (Renault and PSA) and Great Britain (Ford). But independent Japanese manufacturers are doing even worse: Honda (-50.6%), Suzuki (-51.3%), Mazda (-52.7%) and Subaru (-58.2%).

- After starting up its historic factory in Fremont, California (USA), the European workshop in Tilburg (Netherlands) and the new factory in Shanghai (China)which has just started operating this year, Tesla, which has the on the rise (367,820 sales in 2019 compared to 245,240 in 2018 and 93,978 in 2017) announced the upcoming construction of a new factory in Europe, more precisely in Germany (near Berlin) to meet market demand European.

- The factory will obviously be much larger than the Tilburg workshop, which produced only ten thousand cars a year.

- Today, Tesla sells more than 100,000 cars per year in Europe (112,000 units in 2019, it is the first seller of electric cars on this continent) and the Tilburg workshop is no longer calibrated to respond at European request.

- Tesla is therefore implementing a “produce for the local market” strategy. Cars produced in the USA will be mainly intended for the American market, those produced in China will be intended for the Chinese market and those produced in Europe will be intended for the European market.

- Suddenly, the least expensive Tesla models will be produced on all the brand's sites. The Berlin plant will thus see its activity focus on the Model 3, the Model Y and on the future electric car of segment C. The Shanghai plant will have the same manufacturing program. Only the US plant will be the first to sell the more expensive models (Model S, Model X, Roadster and Cybertruck). Inovev estimates the capacity of the German Tesla plant at around 150,000 vehicles per year.

- European car production (VP + LCV) fell 36.2% in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the first quarter of 2019, with a volume of 4.58 million units (compared to 7.19 million the previous year) . The fall has been amplified since March 2020, the date of the start of the containment of the population and the closure of most factories and car dealerships, since it had reached -3% in February, -49% in March and -78 % in April.

- In May, many factories started to restart, but not at their usual pace and rather around the middle of the month. We can therefore count on a drop of almost 50% in May (the same level as in March) and June should start to see a recovery in European production, if demand is still present. It should be present because European governments will do their utmost to revive the activity of the sector, and manufacturers on their side will encourage consumption, thanks in particular to price cuts (to sell stocks), free credits and payment deferrals to 2021 (this has already been happening since the end of May for most manufacturers).

- The objective of limiting the drop in European production to 25% for the whole year is therefore not unrealistic, since over the four months among the worst of the year, we are at -36.2 % and we will undoubtedly be at -38% on the cumulative of the first five months (using a scenario at -50% in May). We should finish the first half at -33%. To end the year at -25%, we should therefore expect a decrease of 15% at most in the second half of 2020, if we take into account the volumes recorded in 2019.