TOKYO — Jeep boss Christian Meunier says his mission is to additional globalize the long-lasting off-road firm and remodel its picture into that of the “greenest SUV model” on the planet.
The technique will contain leveraging synergies with PSA Group and selling Jeep’s upcoming vary of electrified automobiles, partly by a brand new advertising and marketing marketing campaign.
Talking with journalists in Tokyo by video convention final month, Meunier highlighted Jeep’s speedy worldwide enlargement on the again of brisk gross sales in markets similar to Japan.
Jeep’s worldwide gross sales grew fivefold previously decade, from simply 300,000 automobiles in 2009 to round 1.5 million in 2019, he famous. Gross sales in Japan, Jeep’s ninth-largest market, notched a tenfold improve over that interval. Japan is now the highest purchaser of Wranglers outdoors North America.
Jeep used to have simply 4 meeting vegetation, all within the U.S. Now, it has 10 in six nations.
“There are lots of various factors that made the expansion doable,” Meunier mentioned. “However I might say there’s been a variety of funding to globalize the model.”
Trying forward, Meunier mentioned he needs to proceed that momentum partly by tapping advantages from the upcoming merger between PSA and Jeep dad or mum firm Fiat Chrysler Cars. He declined to provide particulars in regards to the synergies he envisions, however he mentioned there can be lots.
“It’s totally clear that Jeep will profit lots from the merger,” he mentioned.
“There’s clearly a variety of potential between platform, drivetrain, value discount and issues like that. There’s a variety of potential alternatives of synergies and manufacturing footprint.”
Jeep will more and more pitch itself as a imply, inexperienced machine, particularly on the worldwide market, the place automakers should meet extra stringent emissions rules. This 12 months, Jeep launched the Renegade 4xe plug-in hybrid in Europe and Japan as a part of a plan that additionally consists of the electrification of the Compass and Wrangler.
However the shift will not be solely about compliance, Meunier mentioned. Jeep can be touting the excessive torque of its electrified choices in a efficiency play.
The Wrangler 4xe proved its metallic in a take a look at drive traversing the demanding Rubicon Path, a 4×4 mecca in California’s Sierra Nevada vary. It drove the entire route in full-electric mode.
Furthermore, entrepreneurs hope Jeep- loving outdoorsy varieties will like driving in silence by nature.
“What’s most necessary is to make our product probably the most succesful and most enjoyable Jeep ever,” Meunier mentioned. “Extra torque, driving in silence, with additional distinctive acceleration and torque — that is the proper match. Jeep and electrification are supposed to be collectively.
“Our ambition is to grow to be the greenest SUV model on the planet.”
Jeep will strive promoting that picture by promoting alongside the strains of a spot that has been launched in Europe to tout the advantages of electrification within the Renegade and Compass, he mentioned. It encompasses a red-breasted songbird warbling over scenes of a Jeep driving in silence by a metropolis.
One other YouTube pitch, referred to as “Pale Blue Dot,” options scientist Carl Sagan waxing dramatic about the necessity to defend the surroundings of planet Earth, “the one residence we have ever recognized.”