PSA boss Tavares voted World Car Person of the Year
Carlos Tavares, chief executive of PSA Group, has been named the 2020 World Car Person of the Year for his “many significant accomplishments” over the past year.
The 86 jurors from the World Car Awards (WCA) voted Tavares, pictured, as the winner ahead of other automotive industry executives, engineers, designers and entrepreneurs.
The 61-year-old’s achievements in the past year include making PSA’s brands respected world-class players, returning the company to profitability, and returning Opel to profitability in record time.
He also negotiated a NZ$76 billion merger of PSA Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler, which will create the fourth-largest carmaker worldwide after the Volkswagen Group, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi and Toyota. Tavares is set to become CEO of the new entity.
The Portuguese businessman has also been masterminding the company’s integration of electrification and mobility strategies.
“His calm, dignified, modest and highly effective approach puts some other executives to shame,” says one WCA juror. “At the heart of [his success] is an understanding of customer needs, but it's all backed with incredible business acumen. That he still manages to be a decent bloke is icing on the cake.”
Tavares says: “It is a great honour to receive this prestigious award which I wish to dedicate to all the employees of the Groupe PSA, to its responsible and demanding social partners and to the supervisory board which guarantees effective governance.”
Previous winners of the World Car Person of the Year were the late Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler, in 2019, and Volvo Car Group’s president and CEO, Hakan Samuelsson, in 2018.
The award is one of six honours handed out annually by the World Car Awards. The winners in the car categories were due to be announced at the New York International Auto Show in April 8, but that event has now been postponed.
CEO warns EVs lack mainstream appeal
Tavares was also recently in the news claiming electric vehicles (EVs) are only bought by “green addicts” and lack broader appeal needed to reach mainstream consumers.
“When some markets are cancelling some subsidies, demand collapses,” he says. “The battle from now on is that zero-emission vehicles become affordable between now and 2025.”
In relation to Peugeot’s struggles to sell EVs to mainstream consumers, he adds: “We are selling our electric vehicles to green addicts. We didn’t move to the pragmatists.”
Tavares also claims the lack of a dense charging network, the limited operating range of EVs and uncertainties around the long-term price of electricity, is stopping more people from buying such cars.
