Porsche boss attacks EU plans
Emissions targets hurt Germans most
Porsche's boss has warned that the EU's latest emissions regulations constitute an attack on Germany's luxury carmakers by France and Italy.
Company CEO Wendelin Wiedeking made the comments at the firm's annual shareholders' meeting on Friday, and highlight that Porsche's products -- along with many of those from Audi, BMW and Mercedes -- are way above proposed new limits. Wiedeking called it a business war in Europe -- and said that Porsche would fight back.
In characterising it as a fight between small carmakers in France and Italy on the one hand and German carmakers on the other, he didn't apparently mention that while Italy's Fiat is unlikely to have problems with absolute emissions limits, Italian firms Ferrari and Maserati almost certainly will.
At stake is the EU's plan to reduce cars' emissions to 120 grammes per kilometre by 2012, according to the FT -- Porsche products' average emissions are over twice as high, with the 2.7-litre engine shared between the Boxster and Cayman emitting 222 g/km, while the 911 Turbo puts out 307g/km. Don't mention the Cayenne.
However, as a relatively low-volume seller -- it sells 96,000 cars a year while VW sells over five million -- Porsche is currently exempted from the voluntary targets. This is no guarantee that the situation will remain so.
Among other announcements at the meeting was a huge jump in revenues: pre-tax profit rose from €278 million to €1.45 billion, which means that the company makes over €15,000 per car -- almost £10,000 -- massively more than any other carmaker.
Much of that profit has been spent over the last year buying shares in VW, of which it now owns 27.4 per cent.
Whilst EUR 1.45b divided by 96,000 is EUR 15,104.17, this implies that 100% of Porsche's revenue is generated solely through vehicle sales. Surely not?
And I would have thought that companies such as Rolls Royce, Pagani, etc. probably make more than ten grand per vehicle or how can they possibly pay for even a fraction of their development costs?
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