It’s Friday and I know you missed him, so he’s back for at least one more appearance in The Morning Dump. It’s your boy Carlos Tavares, pictured above, who helped bring the parent company (Stellantis) of some of America’s most beloved brands into existence, and then, through a series of questionable decisions, made those brands way less valuable! Don’t cry for him, Argentina, he’s walking away with a big pay day.
Sino-Swedish electric carmaker Polestar will also be collecting about $450 million, but only as a short-term loan. How low can the stock go? Quite low, it seems. Speaking of stocks, Ford is going to walk away from a plan to stock EVs at regional hubs.
Finally, Nissan may have set up former CEO Carlos Ghosn over fears that he might allow the French to take over the company permanently. Now it seems like the company might be led… by a Frenchman.
Carlos Tavares Only Earned 350x What The Average Employee Earned Last Year
A year ago I wrote about how Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares earned 518x what the average Stellantis worker earned. Some people got mad at me for even asking the question “Is Carlos Tavares worth it?”
I think history would say: he was not. The end of the Tavares era came after he made dealers, workers, suppliers, governments, and customers mad at the company. In particular, dealers were upset that Stellantis stopped investing in new vehicles people wanted, though the company did post record profits by basically squeezing every last dollar out of the old cars. This worked for a time, and if your view is that a CEO’s only job is to make the stock price go up then maybe he was successful. The long-term costs, though, aren’t great. Stellantis now ranks dead last among major OEMs in terms of supplier relations and it’s having to spend real money to keep dealers happy.
It was untenable, and so Carlos got tossed, so to speak. The good news for Carlos, is he did it in a way that’ll see him end up with a pile of cash, though less than last year as the Detroit Free Press reports.
Tavares’ compensation, which was down almost 37% from $39.5 million (36.5 million euros) in 2023, was 350 times that of the average worker’s last year, which was listed as $68,609 (65,993 euros) and which had also dropped from $73,195 (79,404 euros), according to the filing. Profit-sharing checks of $3,780 for the company’s UAW members, to be paid next month, will fall almost 73% from what was paid in 2024.
But wait, there’s more:
In addition, Tavares’ separation agreement calls for a $2.08 million (2 million euros) severance and a $10.4 million (10 million euros) “milestone” connected to an incentive plan to be paid this year, according to the filing. References were also made to company shares as part of the agreement, but a company spokeswoman said those were reflected in the 2024 compensation.
I have no reason to believe that Tavares didn’t want the best for Stellantis. After a career turning automakers around, it probably sucks to have your legacy be a company that admitted in its most recent investor report that it’s going to take at least a year to dig itself out of the hole Tavares dug for it.
Also, he had to endure all the Jon Lovitz jokes which, if he saw them, were probably nonsensical to him. I do wonder if, at some point, a Stellantis PR person had to, like, describe a typical Jon Lovitz character to Tavares. I will buy a beer for anyone who had to do that. I will say a nice thing about the Dodge Hornet. Whatever you want! Let’s be friends!
Polestar Needs $450 Million Loan To Keep Operating, Delays Financial Report Yet Again
Polestar makes good, attractive electric cars. The problem for Polestar is that many other people make good, attractive electric cars. Maybe those cars aren’t as attractive, but many of them are cheaper and have better range.
The economics of Polestar, which was once a Volvo performance offshoot that got gobbled up by shared parent company Geely, only made sense in the early EV buzz era when the automaker went public. Then, it seemed, anyone making electric cars was valuable. That perspective has changed a lot, which has damaged the company’s bottom line, and it’s not clear where the future lies.
Therefore, Polestar is borrowing money and (again) delaying its (probably bad) quarterly financial report according to the company:
In February 2025, the Company secured up to USD 450 million in a 12-month term facility after having secured in December 2024 over USD 800 million in 12-month term facilities.
Polestar originally entered into a 12-month TFF with a syndicate of leading global banks in February 2022 to support its working capital requirements and in February 2025 the facility has been renewed for EUR 480 million.
The financial report will now come out in April, along with the full-year results.
Ford Gets Rid Of Rapid Replenishment Centers
For a while, Ford was pushing the idea of a “Rapid Replenishment Center” to stock electric cars for dealers at regional hubs. Under this system, dealers wouldn’t have to pay floorplan loans for EVs and, in theory, this would make distribution cheaper and more Tesla-like.
In a world where dealers can’t get Lightnings fast enough, this might have made sense, but that doesn’t seem to be the world we’re all living in right now.
According to Automotive News, that idea is dead:
Ford began piloting the concept in May 2024 with the F-150 Lightning and late last year tried to boost participation by incentivizing dealers to order through the centers. But slow adoption and a series of issues prompted the company to pull the plug.
Executives told dealers at the 2025 NADA Show, and in subsequent internal video messages, that Ford was discontinuing the system and returning the Lightning to the traditional wholesale process used for every other model.
“Our intent all along was to better serve the customer,” Mike O’Brien, Ford’s senior director of retail network and sales strategy, told Automotive News. “We think the pilot, from an operational perspective, was a big success. That being said, we listen to our dealers. There’s been a lot of shifts in the marketplace. It is a little tricky to have two different [sales] methodologies.”
You gotta try things.
The Frenchman Who Might (Temporarily) Run Nissan
It’s not official that Nissan is ditching its CEO, and I don’t have enough insight into the company to say one way or the other. People are talking about it, though, and people are contemplating who might be next. That’s never a good sign.
The easiest and most likely interim choice? The guy right behind current CEO Makoto Uchida, according to Japanese business publication Diamond:
Even after Nissan’s performance had fallen into a slump, Uchida could have negotiated with financial institutions and collaborative partners to protect Nissan’s tangible and intangible assets in exchange for his own dismissal, and his self-preservation attitude was enough to displease Nissan employees.
Nissan’s nomination committee and board of directors, which appointed Uchida and allowed him to continue in power, should also be criticized for their negligence.
According to Diamond’s editorial team, CFO Jeremy Papin is expected to be selected as the “interim CEO” to succeed him. Because this will be a sudden change of position, the title will likely include the caveat that he has been selected on an interim basis.
Papin previously served as Chairman of Nissan Americas and Nissan, more than anywhere, needs to do better in North America. Is it a little ironic that Nissan forced out Carlos Ghosn because, partially, it was afraid of being run by the French and now they’re going to put a Frenchman in charge?
Yes.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Imagine trying to explain Japanese ’90s hip-hop group Cibo Matto to your daughter? You can’t. So you just put “Sci-Fi Wasabi” on and let Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori take it away.
The Big Question
Was Carlos Tavares worth it?
Top photo: Depositphotos.com/Stellantis
For a mere 4100 times Carlos’s salary they could have Elon.
Fiat, Alfa, and Maserati all under control of Elon. What could go wrong when Italians team up with Nazis?
Depends on how much ketamine, Bolivian marching power and red wine they have.
It’s Elon. They’d have all they want and more.
*Pulls up lectern and whips out note cards* The historical precedent here might not be how you think, at least with Fiat. While on paper they were aligned with Mussolini just like most any business that wanted to survive in Italy in that era, Turin was notably anti-fascist, Giovanni Agnelli (the elder) was certainly no real fan of Mussolini, and Vittorio Valletta actually had to hide from the fascists for a minute. After the war, there were a few arrests of Fiat leaders for collaboration, but they were able to show that they had cooked their books and were supporting the resistance with money, vehicles and fuel while lightly sabotaging their war production and thus were released. The properly questionable dealings don’t really hit until you get to the 70’s and Fiat’s dealings with Libya. That being said, there are some disturbing parallels between Elon and certain historical members of the Agnelli family.
Any Frenchman who agrees to run Nissan needs to just go ahead and hire a band with oversized, air conditioned equipment cases.
The new Polestar 3 is getting absolutely panned because apparently they went full Tesla, put literally everything in the infotainment screen, and interacting with it is an abject disaster. On top of that it’s also a nearly $100,000 vehicle. While most EVs are overpriced and dependent on subsidized leases, charging that much for a wonky luxury crossover is such a bad idea you kind of have to wonder if they’re intentionally trying to kill it.
Polestar is a dead company walking and I’m once again thinking that the inordinate amount of resources many of these EV startups could’ve been better used in other ways…although can we even call Polestar a startup since it started as a Volvo offshoot? I’m not sure but it certainly has that vibe.
I never totally understood why Polestar had to be a totally separate brand, other than the general Chinese obsession with creating as many brands as possible often for nebulous reasons. Just make them Volvos
Polestar never should have been spun off into a separate brand. They had no little to no recognition outside of enthusiasts.
And enthusiasts were interested when it was Volvo’s version of AMG or Abarth, that perception was lost when it turned into a more general market EV-only brand, instead of tuned variants of Volvos
In the U.S. a country that judges a person mainly on their ability to game the system, Tavares should be considered a hero.
I promise you, I could have done the job of ruining Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram much cheaper! I would have done this for, say half the price. An absolute bargain!
Also, I would have done it in style.
Chrysler, start building a RWD electric Imperial Sedan. Sell the Pacifica with a poptop camper version.
Dodge. Neon is back baby! Try out a small happy tossable car. Sell a GLH version (yes, I know that was actually the Omni).
Jeep. Focus solely on building oddball future Holy Grail’s for David Tracy. A desiel powered hybrid electric plug-in Golden Eagle.
Ram. Stop this silliness. Ram is a Dodge again. Also, I’d have Ram bring back the minitruck as cheaply as possible. Find a way to sell brand new Kei trucks as a Ramcharger 50.
10s of people will buy these vehicles. 10s! The company will fail and I will get paid.
EV’s suck and are a dead concept, how many more signs do the fan boys need to read? Can’t wait for the white knights on here to come railing to their defense.
Until there is widespread nuclear in the USA, EV’s are stupid, expensive, massive polluters. Buy used if you care about the environment.
P.S. Been great over here since my ad-blocker started catching those pop-up videos you won’t stop!
I’m far from an EV stan and have no interest in owning one anytime soon but you’re going to have to cite some of your sources
please don’t goad them on.
Checks Norway…abundant hydro power and 89% of new cars sold are EVs…
Yep, that seems fairly dead. Would be a shame if we had non-polluting power generation and people just drove cars that worked off that, oh well guess we should just go back to coal and leaded gasoline.
Norway has a $1.74 trillion govern wealth fund from selling oil. Spending some of that investment fund money to increase oil exports is not the same thing as borrowing and spending.
Yep that’s difference between capitalism and socialism, but the point was EVs are a dead concept when real world examples show they aren’t.
EV accelerationism is now a dead concept. People will buy them when the price and features make sense for their personal lives.
Norway’s vehicle tax system heavily favors EVs. This is public knowledge.
They do have pretty ridiculous taxes on non BEV automobiles.
Mmmm… Norway used the blunt hammer of tax policy to do that, EVs are exempt from taxes under roughly $43K in value, whereas ICE vehicles are subject to something like a 150% tax. Only the filthy rich can afford to buy an ICE vehicle there, and this year the plan is to ban ICE sales all together, so not really a fair market comparison.
EV’s are a lotto where the odds are actually in your favor, and you can’t win if you don’t play.
I tend to take a more measures approach on EVs.
In terms of propulsion, an electric motor blows ICE out of the water. Cheaper to produce, simpler maintenance, better packaging – there are just so many upsides. The battery tech isn’t quite there yet though, and the infrastructure has a long way to go, but EVs are far from a dead concept.
What I hope is a dead end is this notion of a “software defined vehicle”. OTA updates for a car just shouldn’t be a thing. Nor should paywalled features.
Built us a car that doesn’t have all the computer and cellular crap (looking at you, 3G), so it will be repairable and maintainable for 50 years if we want to keep it that long, and you’ll have a world beater.
I’m sure you otherwise care very deeply about the environment when you’re not using it to try and prove a nebulous point.
New feature requests for Autopian: Ability to block users, and ability to downvote comments into oblivion.
I assume you don’t pay for membership as I sure as shit don’t get pop up ads.
I prefer BEV drivetrains. The most fun car I’ve ever driven is a BEV (1980 Comuta Car with a 72v battery system upgrade and 24hp motor swap).
Basically every train in the US is a EV via a diesel electric drivetrain, they work great, better than the pure ICE trains by far. So far from a dead concept.
As someone who knows F-all about electricity, and has dealt with more electrical gremlins in 12 years than most people deal with in the entirety of their lifetimes, I genuinely hope my next car will be a BEV.
No oil changes, dirt simple drivetrain, regenerative braking saving my brake pads, not effected by altitude, no tailpipe exhaust, etc. I love them. I just want someone to put one in a new car that I want to buy and make it practical enough for my use case. I’m willing to make a ton of concessions to get a BEV drivetrain in my next new car.
CEO’s should be the first employees replaced with AI. They can’t do any worse of a job and each one will literally save companies tens of millions of dollars.
Cibo Matto was exactly the weirdness I needed today. Thank you.
It just seems like Tavares was trying to out-VW the VW Group with the number of brands in their portfolio.
PSA had been talking about returning to the US for years. Assuming they began designing products to accommodate the standards & regs for our market, the bigger lift arguably would have been distribution and production. Getting FCA seems like it would have at least saved them the distribution step in the near term, instead CDJR showrooms have less product than they did beforehand.
And none of that can happen now, because with tariffs, a $35,000 Peugeot would become a $44,000 Dodge, without even accounting for the transportation and federalization costs
No one person is worth that much, especially if they didn’t do the job. That’s the real issue, they can tank the stock and have the company go bankrupt but they walk away ok. It’s an an image problem, the company is afraid to look bad and usually the CEO’s salary and compensation is public, so if they show they CEO didn’t get a raise or bonus, then omg the company is in peril and the stock will tank.
Of course if their ‘bonus’ is stock options, it’s all just funny money and when they tank the stock they tank their bonus so that’s better, but still is Johnny Paycheck that’s riveting fenders on getting anything that year?
The flip side on stock options is then you get wild NYSE casino gambling where Tesla that makes barely 5 car models has a valuation higher than Toyota/GM/Ford combined, and their CEO’s stock options make him the richest man in the world, but I mean, is that his fault? If NYSE wakes up and goes oh, their robots are just remote controlled and they’ll never have FSD, stock worth $5, then his value tanks too.
Whoever did that top shot owes David a sympathy beer.
Here I go again….
“Dear Company X:
I see you have fired your CEO for being stupid and a complete F-up. I am willing to offer my services to you at a greatly reduced rate. I am highly qualified at making dumb decisions and F-ing things up. Just ask any family member, boss or coworker. I have 50 years of track records of doing dumb things and have the scars to prove it.
Anyway, for HALF what you paid the last guy to quit… I won’t even start. Just hire and Fire me. I guarantee I won’t F-up your company as bad as the last guy just because I won’t have time to do so.
Sincerely,
Mike Price, former Alabama Football Coach.”
Once again, the rich fail upwards. As ever, failing as a CEO nets Tavares a multi-million $ bonus. But, you know, federal workers don’t deserve their paychecks. It’s hilarious that any working person supports for these asshats.
Truthfully I don’t know. Can anyone think of a positive accomplishment of his?
Taking home over $100MM in 4 years is an accomplishment.
Which is a positive for him.
Line go up!
If you give me a week, I might think of something. I don’t remember
Dang late stage capitalism. NO CEOs are worth as much as many are being paid these days.
It seemed that ol’ Carlos could do no wrong during the pandemic. Too bad he’s a slash and burn CEO in an environment that needs a motivational, new ideas CEO. He slashed into living tissue and wounded the company. So out the window under his golden parachute he goes.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
And of course its counterpoint:
When the tide goes you you see who’s been swimming naked
Volvo needs to close Polestar and fold it into their lineup. That way Volvo doesn’t have to try to sell people on the idea that their EVs are still premium, but not premium like the premium Polestar EVs.
I think they’re separate companies?
Volvo bought Polestar and then used it as a separate, distinct company for their EV efforts. To put it another way, Volvo is the parent company of Polestar.
And if you want to get technical, in turn, Geely Group owns both of them.
Geely is the parent company to both, but the management of Polestar goes directly to Geely. Volvo cut management and financial ties to Polestar.
They did this so Volvo wouldn’t have its brand equity diluted in case the EV part suffered. So I think it was the right call, just like most startups and when entering to an unproven market.
The thing is, Polestar was, or maybe still is, sold through Volvo dealers. I don’t think it is a stretch for customers to logically think that Polestar is more than less linked to Volvo.
from a customer standpoint yes they’ll associate it with Volvo.
But the regular customer doesn’t know whether the sales are doing good or not.
And more importantly, the shareholders are happy the startup didn’t drag them down
Separate in a very tenuous sense, Geely can pretty much do what they want with both of them
Geely owns 79% of Volvo Cars and 34% of Polestar
Geely’s founder and controlling shareholder, Li Shufu, separately owns another 39% of Polestar through his investment company PSD Investment
In addition, Volvo Cars themselves hold another 18% of Polestar, which means the Geely group collectively controls 91% of the company (effective ownership is more like 87%, due to the outside shareholders in Volvo)
I never understood the spinoff and never thought it was a good idea. Polestar always seemed like it should have remained the “EV trim” (or EV-only models) from the Volvo group. IMO, Polestar has almost zero cachet and they messed up here. Hyundai needed to do this for Genesis….and arguably the same for Lexus, Infiniti, and Acura. But Volvo was already moving upscale across the board.
Sugar Water was always my favorite track and the stuff Yuka did later with John Zorn is pretty good too.
Surely this is the best economic system ever devised and it would be sheer folly to try and find something even slightly better.
Slightly better? Are you suggesting COMMUNISM?
Short term: no, long term: yes.
Nyet, tovarishch.
100 million deaths caused by communism in the 20th Century, including some of my relatives.
Tavares might have been worth it if you only focus on Stellantis’ European operations and nothing else, the company seems fairly OK there, but he honestly seemed to have no idea what to do with the North American business and didn’t care to figure it out, almost like they just don’t really want it at all.
To be honest, at this point, I’m kind of wondering what FCA really brought to the table anyway, I mean, Fiat is strong in Latin America and Italy, but, isn’t really dominant anywhere else, and Maserati and Alfa Romeo are perennial white elephants.
FCA US was sort of run into the ground for a decade, because they didn’t want to spend the money to on new product, and Lancia’s lone model does well in Italy, but they have only one model and only in Italy
Did PSA even really need this merger?
FCA brought Jeep and Ram, I doubt PSA would have been interested in them otherwise. Make no mistake much of that record profit they had the past few years was off the back of those brands. That gravy train is over though.
The late 90s, and especially Cibo Matto, are my happy place. I spin my Takako Minekawa and pretend the world is still okay more nights than I don’t these days.
Golden parachute for bailing out of a lead balloon, sounds about right.
I’ll tell you what I told my daughter in response to why I don’t watch pro sports anymore. “I never feel the need to cheer for anyone making $40 million a year.”
Sure, he took a risk, and his pay reflects the risk he took, as well as the eventual destruction of his reputation (just like an NFL player and his average 3-year career). And to keep a sports analogy going, maybe it’s time we stop making everything about the QB, but instead find 2-3 running backs who can throw the ball. Diversify the leadership a bit.
You missed the most impressive part of Tavares’ overall
paygrift package:Over 4 years, he’s taken home $106,200,000
Plus the $12MM he’s getting as part of his severance.
I’d like to know how I can get a job like this.
A really clever LinkedIn profile surely.
Tavares actually reads all those LinkedIn posts about B2B Marketing and How to Make Your resume Stand Out.
Become an ambitious sociopath. Empathy for others is not a recipe for 1%-level financial success, generally speaking.
This.
There’s no point in winning when you can lose and still profit spectacularly.
Which is why, as Billy Joel often said, “Only the Good Die Young”
Get an MBA and you too could fail your way to the top.
Once you’re in the executive club, it is just a game of musical chairs, performance is irrelevant.
To Stellantis? No. To this site? Yes. To SNL? Also yes.
We desperately need “Looks vaguely like Dennis Miller” to be part of the hiring process for the next guy.
I’ll also settle for Nealon.
While we’re at it, I’d like to see somebody explain “pictured above” to Lovitz.
We desperately need an exclusive Jon Lovitz interview video on this site where Matt with a totally straight face peppers him with questions about destroying Stellantis.
Lovitz would absolutely go with it and it would be perfect!
Lovitz is on Cameo, we can make this happen starting at $150.
@Matt where’s the link for us to contribute to this?!?
The hyper-exclusive membership tier above Rich Corinthian Leather: “Pictured Above”
(Cue Sarah McLaughlin music)
For as little as $1 per member, you can help bring a beloved comedian to make extremely inside jokes to car nerds in need.
(Insert black and white image of pouting Jon Lovitz)
Please make this happen
This is the best single sentence I have read in the last year.