‘It’s time to connect every car, not wait for the EU to demand eCall, but go for it and utilise what we have in the group.’ Opel chairman Karl Thomas Neumann was speaking to journalists at the Geneva Show in March, explaining Opel’s strategy for car connectivity. ‘We rolled out On-Star 18 years ago in North America, Canada, Mexico and a few years ago in China. We now have 6.5m customers. That means it is the largest connected vehicle network in the world. Every second we have two calls from our customers – 4,500 emergency calls every month.

‘We want to bring this to Europe and will introduce it in 2015. In the meantime, the system is being built up and it will be standard on every car except entry-level models. We’re doing this because it will give us a whole new means of access to customers and a whole new business opportunity. With this device we will bring 4G nternet access with a Wi-Fi hotspot into the car, eCall and emergency services into every car.

‘Further we will bring data services. All our cars are “app ready” – we have an app where you can control your car remotely.

You can have monthly vehicle diagnosis; we can send you offers for maintenance – so many things that can be done. New services working with hotels, restaurants, many things that can be created once you have the data channel into the car and that data channel will be ours.’

Dr Neumann said that Opel was on target to break even in Europe by 2016 and said that the company’s results had improved by more than 50%. ‘It’s still a loss but we’ve cut it by 60%,’ he said. In 2013 it was the first time in 14 years that Opel had maintained its market share. ‘We did it with improved financial results, so that means we didn’t “buy” it,’ he said. The key elements in improving the company’s fortunes were the introduction of new product and a more intensified focus on the brands.

Opel has been working on product quality, but it’s not easy to get that message across to vehicle buyers. How did Dr Neumann, an engineer himself, hope to raise brand perception?

‘First of all we have fixed our past quality problems,’ Dr Neumann told IFW. ‘We have a lot of focus on quality and we see this on new launches like Mokka, because of our heritage and our engineering passion. We should exhibit this in making everything perfect.’ He gives the example of a key. ‘It may work 100,000 times, but how does it feel? Does it feel as good as the next key? How do the panel gaps look?

Are they precise? What do the edges look like? We are working very hard to make everything perfect and you can see it already with the newer cars.’

Opel’s partnership with PSA Peugeot Citroën has gone through several revisions since it was announced at the end of 2012 and Dr Neumann outlined some of the important elements of the agreement, which includes logistics and purchasing.

Joint purchasing means that together, the two companies have the second largest purchasing volume in Europe and Dr Neumann explained why that is important even to a company like GM, which builds 10m cars a year.

‘We need local scale, scale in Europe,’ he said. ‘Tyres are made in Europe, steel is purchased in Europe and we can do this together now so we have local scale.’

Dr Neumann outlined the plans for Opel and PSA to build three cars together. ‘Our

MPVs – the Meriva, the Zafira and also our next generation Combo light CV. We will do this on a PSA platform with PSA engines.

‘We will make sure it’s an Opel because we will engineer the vehicles using some of our modules, but using their platform.’

The two companies are already working closely together on these projects and will produce them together. ‘One will be built in Spain, the other car in France, so we have volume and scale,’ says Dr Neumann.

‘We’re doing this because Opel is the third largest car maker in Europe. We build more than a million cars. Still that is not enough if you have the spectrum we have, because on any car we need to make 300,000 plus, but on lower volume cars we make much less, so we need volume in platforms. All our cars sit on huge global platforms from General Motors. All are built in the millions. The only two that I couldn’t put on such platforms were the MPVs, that’s why we want a partner. And for LCVs anyhow, you seek global partners.’

The Russian connection

Opel believes that Russia will be the largest car market in Europe in 2020.

‘Opel has a very good position there,’ says Dr Neumann. It is also a good market for Chevrolet, so how can the company avoid the competition that proved problematic in Western Europe?

‘That’s obviously something we’re looking at but here the issue is different,’ he explains. ‘That’s why we decided that Chevrolet stays in Russia – for two reasons.

‘One is that Chevrolet is much bigger in Russia relatively than it was in the rest of

‘Secondly, the product portfolio is different. We import a few more budget type cars into Russia or build them in Uzbekistan and ship them. In general the portfolios are better separated and the transaction prices between Opel and Chevrolet are much more distinctive than they used to be here, so it’s good, we have to develop this further and fine tune it, but generally it would be stupid to give up a position where you have two brands which you can really position.’

Emissions strategy

Finally, Dr Neumann discussed how Opel would meet the EU goal of average emissions of 95gm/km CO2 by 2020. ‘Our strategy is to reach as much as possible with traditional combustion engines’ although there will be some electric vehicles he said. Efficiency is the key. ‘We believe we can achieve our goal with extremely efficient drivetrains, efficient cars and the minimum of electrification.’