The Stellantis Group was only just in the media with the rebirth of the Lancia brand, which was thought to be dead, but now a mega deal has been announced: car rental company Sixt wants to buy up to a quarter of a million vehicles over the next three years. year.
“The agreement has a value of several billion euros,” the two companies said. The parent company of brands such as Peugeot, Fiat, Opel and Chrysler will equip parts of the rental fleets in Europe and North America.
The first vehicles are expected to arrive in the spring. Sixt does not commit to orders after the current year; how many vehicles the rental company ultimately purchases depends on need and demand.
Premium brands are retained
With the help of the framework agreement with Stellantis, the company from Pullach near Munich will be able to “accelerate its growth strategy in the future,” said co-CEO Konstantin Sixt. Traditionally, Sixt’s fleet consists largely of the German brands Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Sixt has had difficulty in supplying new vehicles in recent years.
This was because the company was growing strongly, especially in the US, increasing sales by almost 20 percent in the first nine months of 2023 alone. During the corona pandemic, Sixt temporarily reduced the size of its fleet. According to the annual report, the company added 146,200 new cars to its fleet in 2022 for 4.9 (2021: 5.1) billion euros, more than 20,000 fewer than a year earlier. Figures for 2023 are not yet available.
There are also electric cars
Some of the Stellantis vehicles for Sixt will be electric cars. It was recently announced that Sixt no longer wanted to include Tesla in its own fleet due to its weak residual values. Most recently there were about 3,000 units. A Sixt spokesperson said that in the long term, 70 to 90 percent of the Sixt fleet should consist of electric vehicles.
Sixt wants to have the vehicles on the road for about seven to eight months. Stellantis would then have to buy them back.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
