IMO it’ll come down to cash. Ineos have spent a great deal of money to date which will only be recouped big scale from chassis profit.
Ineos haven’t grown to success by wasting money, they’ll want a payback, break even at least.
I guess that unit chassis profit will be something like €16-18k at current listed selling prices. There will be some agency/dealer cost to suck up so say €10k unit profit.
30k units a year built & sold suggests a profitable (cash +ve) business but a slow payback, especially if we assume they could never sell Hambach plant for what it cost, have to write the cost off against p&l, they continue to incur chunky development costs and have to market the vehicles.
If they give up or fail then the issue for owners will likely be the unique parts - body/trim/dash/firewall, etc. Dedicated Saab or Rover owners will testify to parts supply and I suspect the park for those brands was larger but vehicle life cycle much shorter. Parts are tricky, even old Land Rover parts can be tricky.
Gut feel is that at some point the global economy will squeeze and Ineos will face difficult choices, hopefully without pressure from their funders. They need IA to be stable if/when the squeeze comes.
For me they will be around in ten years if they sort the niggles quickly and before they release many more vehicles.
That’s what I’d do, fix the issues this summer and press on again in the Autumn because the vehicle looks and feels ace.
I’d hire some very good customer facing people, ideally multi-lingual folk with technical speaking skills, an empathetic nature and make sure I was open about the issues being faced. Train them up rigorously. Head in sand = failure I think.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in since early days and am looking forward to getting ’my truck’ but I’ll not put up with shoddy build and niggly faults. Mechanical failures I can live with hoping that IA have a parts supply system in place.
I wish Ineos the very best for continuing this project to long term success.
