Ineos want to manufacture in US

FT article this morning

Ineos Automotive is searching for sites to move production of its flagship 4x4 vehicle from France to the US, as its billionaire owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe continues to pump cash into the struggling carmaker.

Chief executive Lynn Calder told the Financial Times the group aimed to start producing its Grenadier off-roader in America “as quickly as possible” to meet local demand.

Client Challenge

 

[Max]

Zimm doing something normally, I take a breath

 

[Mike24Ineos]

I have people in $150k Range Rovers inquiring about my Grenadier. People who know , want it. They also want a dealer network so they could service their vehicle without driving 1-2 hours to get there. We need a true effort here in the U.S.

 

[Mike24Ineos]

The US car industry developed and marketed the major model change every few years. Considering this if Ineos built a factory in the US would there be enough demand for new Grenadiers in five years without major technical and aesthetic changes? G Wagon, LR Defender, LC and Nissan Patrol wagons all changed considerably to keep relevant in the current market.

The grenadier does not need change. It needs refinement to be more popular and lower prices from U.S. mfg. wouldn't hurt it either.

 

[LeeroyJ]

In a recent interview from carmagazine.com Lynn Calder laid out, that they want to move production to the US "when the time is right". She get's more precise: "There’s no point in having two factories that are not fully utilised. If you fill Hambach… then at that point we’re very interested in building Grenadier and Quartermaster in the US."

So it may take some time...

AWo

Iirc the Hambach factory has a design capacity of 35,000 units per year. If Ineos wants to avoid being production capacity constrained (as opposed to consumer demand constrained) then I suspect they wouldn't start looking at supplementing that capacity with another factory until they are producing and selling ~30K per year. Unless of course some other factor comes into play (like tariffs, incentives, a deal on selling Hambach or on buying some other US factory, etc.).