As customers I would assume that most of you are interested in having a robust background for the car. Service, parts, repairs, etc. For those of you who not just want to drive a Grenadier once and only as long as the leasing lasts (maybe 3 or 5 years), but maybe 5, 10 or even longer, a reliable and healthy company is a must. Maybe many of you also want to drive a potential successor.
So I asked myself what does it take? In some discussions in this forum IA is considered as a small vehicle manufacturer, even if not in terms of law, but the production/sales numbers (but only looked at Europe). So my question is, what do you think, where is Ineos Automotive in five years? Will there be a third model, next to the Grenadier and the E-Grenadier which should enter the market 2026 at the latest (ok, looking at the promised schedules and the actual performance of the Grenadier I don't believe that this will happen...).
I looked at a few numbers regarding car manufacturers and their sales number worldwide. The smallest numbers I could get (for 2019) were Aston Martin with 59,000 units followed by Ferrari with 101,000 units. Tesla is at 368,000 units and JLR 558,000. From all listed here, only Astom Martin is member of the ESCA, the European Small Volume Car Manufacturer Alliance, where Ineos is also a member of. Ineos targets 30,000 to 35,000 units per year for the Grenadier. Other brands of the ESCA are part of large companies or have a close relationship to them, like Alpina or Bugatti. The ESCA limit is set to 10,000 units per year registered in Europe, which makes clear that they can have larger production numbers in global sales, like Aston Martin or Ineos. I think that is important, because it shows that if you look at the scale of the manufacturing, number of plants, employees, service organization, sales organization and if there is access to parts of the group or if you produce all on you own, makes a difference. Interestingly Wiesmann is a member of the ESCA as well, even if it had very small numbers compared to the others and Wiesmann today is far from beeing the original Wiesmann of the three brothers (they were really crazy in what they did and how one of them did marketing). Wiesmann is also a good example, that even if you are based on an existing car and existing engines, there always was a cross-financing. Wiessmann produced childrens clothing and hard-top-conversions very successfull and that paid many of the Wiesmann bills.
What I'm very curious about is, if Ineos can get the turnaround to become a profitable copany with a car which has to face the wind of change regarding environmental issues. Regardless of all enthusiasts here, you need quite higher sales numbers to keep such an organization running over a longer period of time or you need a far higher price per unit. You could think the E-Grenadier is exactly the right thing to do, to mitigate that. But it will cost a huge amount of money to devolp this beforehand. And after that? Will there a third modell and will there be money to develop it? All of the manufacturers of the ESCA either modify existing cars or they have more modells to sell, but all at very exclusive prices or they produce for a niche. Like Goupil (which belongs to Polaris), but their customers are not private persons but communities and public service organizations.
What do you think how Ineos Automotive will look like in five years and which cars will they offer?
AWo
