It’s not easy being Citroen
While the reviews and general content focus on the end product. The way they get there is so vastly different.
Citroen is trying to compete with mass-market manufacturers like Tata/Maruti, who have well-controlled suppliers and an established brand image. Maruti is able to consistently undercut its competition partly because of its sheer scale of production and the relations it maintains with its suppliers, who give Maruti very competitive pricing in return for bulk orders.
The more you produce, the more you can justify large-scale investments like robots and automation. In the case of an upcoming manufacturer like Citroen, that will not happen overnight.
So Citroen’s manufacturing setup is mainly manual, and their supply chain is still not as optimised as say, Hyundai or Tata. This puts them at a disadvantage in the early years. Moreover, Citroen has been churning out new models rapidly. First, it was the C5 Aircross, then the C3, then eC3 and now the C3 Aircross, with more in the pipeline.
This is an effort to stay relevant in the Indian consumer’s mind and not fizzle out, perhaps like some other manufacturers in recent years.
Conclusion
The Indian car market is a very cutthroat, unforgiving market. It will not be an easy way up, and they are doing almost everything they can to scale their operations and reach more people. It is not going to be an easy road up. However, they seem to be taking all the measures to ride the initial stage out.
Even for someone as invested in the industry as me, to learn about the various interconnecting parts, (both figuratively and literally) that go into making a car really fired up my imagination and pulled back the curtain on the black box that car manufacturing usually is.
Moreover, experiences like this really do help many engineers consider a career in automotive, which has really taken a backseat in this age of computer science. Nonetheless, if any other manufacturer is reading this, please do more such events. It was such a blast getting to know the people behind the cars we read about every day and the nitty gritty decisions that go behind every part!
Disclosure: Stellantis did not ask me to write this. I am a student here at IITM, and I found their setup very interesting, so I am writing about it. They will be reading this along with you guys for the first time.
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