General Motors can re-enter the European market as an electric-vehicle focused company, GM CEO Mary Barra said, even though she has no “seller’s remorse” about divesting Opel/Vauxhall to PSA Group in 2017.
Barra made the comments at the Milken Institute’s global conference this month Los Angeles.
“About five years ago we sold our Opel business to what is now Stellantis, and we have no seller’s remorse from an internal-combustion business,” she said, “but we can re-enter Europe as an all-EV player, and I’m looking forward to that,” she told Brian Sullivan of CNBC at the conference.
Barra and Carlos Tavares, the CEO of PSA at the time and now head of Stellantis, engineered the $2.2 billion sale of GM’s European business following years of losses. Under PSA, and now Stellantis, Opel has return to profitability through integration of development, production and back-office operations.
GM did not fully exit Europe after the Opel sale, retaining a headquarters in Zurich and selling a small number of Cadillacs (mostly the XT4 crossover) and the Chevrolet Corvette and Camaro. Last year there were about 500 of each brand sold in Europe, according to JATO Dynamics.