AutoblogGreen

Excellent...That is one mother feeling gorgeous car.

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The point about the synergies in the deal I think is an important one. Just as Fiat have a huge JV in India, the smaller and more nimble Pininfarina could well join forces with Tata to make green vehicles (and be a little more ädventurous"than Fiat). As rightly stated, Pininfarina already have a deal in hand with Bollore for batteries, and Tata also have the interesting Tata MDI compressed air concept as well.

Given the size and growth rates of countries like India and China, it's paramount to be able to set up successful JVs there, if possible. Indeed, some of Europe's largest companies have already done so. France is leading the way on cooperation with China, and Italy is doing the same with India.

Besides Fiat and Tata producing certain car models and multijet engines together in India, Tata also have a seat on the Fiat board of directors. Europe's largest ship-building conglomerate, Fincantieri, collaborates on India's aircraft program and the research vessel Saghar Nidhi. Last year India launched an Italian scientific satellite, Agile, on its PSLV launcher for low earth orbits.

In China France is showing the way with industrial and technological cooperation on programs as varied as Airbus components (cooperating with Toulouse), Eurocopter helicopters (Marseille) and trains (Alstom). Europe's largest space company, the Franco-Italian Thales Alenia Space, has set up a deal to launch several satellites with China's Long March launcher. Similarly Europe's biggest semiconductor manufacturer, the Franco-Italian JV STMicro, has set up a high-tech company called Numonyx with Intel (which currently has the larger stake), which has set up production now in China as well.

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Jay, cooperations in the growing emerging markets are always good for economy and technological advancement. AFAIK most EU corporations have cooperation treaties with Chinese and/or Indian companies. Even monstrous corrupted old-fashioned conglomerates like Siemens have a lot of factories and research centers in China. And small university spin-offs like Aixtron have Joint-Ventures in the emerging markets, too. I can't think of any European industrial corporation with more than 100 million € volume of sales which doesn't massively invest in such cooperations. Even GM, a company which seems to lag behind everything at the moment, has very successful joint-ventures in China. The only synergistic problems that you can get with Chinese joint-ventures are big image problems like the ones Volkswagen gets at the moment: On the one hand China is their biggest market and they had a good strategy to introduce 2 new sedans for the Chinese market during the Olympian games (Lavida and New Bora), but on the other hand they now have very big image problems in their 2nd biggest (Germany) and their 3rd biggest (USA) market because of their activity in China.

Pininfarina is one of the companies that could profit extremely from such a cooperation. There are very good synergistic potentials and India is politically less complicated then China.

@Karl-Uwe
Drove a Fiat 500 myself on Friday. There was some test drive campaign by a local Fiat dealer.Nice car. Fiat really improved a lot in the last 5 years. The handling is fantastic! Even if you are right with some of your arguments, could you please stop to call me adolfian.
I hate Godwin's law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law.

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Here is a video of the Pininfarina fuel cell car (featuring Nuvera's Quadrivium drive) pictured above:

http://digg.com/autos/Pininfarina_Fuel_Cell_Concept_Car

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Siemens is a horrible, horrible example of cooperation with fast-growing Asian economies.

Siemens mobile was sold to the taiwanese Benq in 2005. Siemens actually PAID Benq 250 million euros to take the company off their hands, which then went bankrupt in 2006 and finally closed its doors in 2007.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2005/06/13/2003259149

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Similarly, Asian companies tried to salvage the Dornier aircraft company, which went bankrupt anyway in 2002.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_GmbH#History

Aircraft of the same size, produced by the Franco-Italian JV ATR (the largest turboprop manufacturer in the world), on the contrary, can't be produced fast enough to meet demand. The same is true for the futuristic and highly efficient Piaggio Avanti (Italy), while Dassault (France) are also doing extremely well.

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The topic of JVs I think you'll find is closely related to "adolfism" as well. The Fiat-Tata and Pininfarina-Tata agreemtents above are indeed JVs, but I think you'll find that what VW and other German companies have abroad are in fact fully-owned subsidiaries. One of the reasons for this is that at the heart of adolfism is the assumption that one is better than everyone else, or that everyone else is simply trash. That kind of assumption makes it very difficult, if not impossible to work side-by-side with somebody else.

And you don't need to go to Asia or South America to see this. It's quite clear simply looking at the various European consortia which exist today. The biggest, the most strategic and most high-tech JVs in place today have no German content whatsoever.

The Fremm-Horizon Programme is the most ambitious and innovative European naval defence project ever. At over 15 billion euros (11 billion for FREMM and 4 billion for Horizon), it is also Western Europe's largest naval project to date (from the occar website) :

http://www.european-defence.co.uk/fremm.html

Similarly the NEURON program for a EUROPEAN Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is both a very ambitious, expensive and strategic one. It is generally accepted that future military and civil aircraft will be autonomous. The program is led by Dassault of France, and also participating are Sweden, Italy, Spain, Greece and Switzerland. This first phase of the program is valued at over 400 million and again Germany is not participating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_nEUROn

Similarly, the new European spacecraft launcher, Vega, which includes development of new solid rocket boosters for the Ariane5 built in Evry, has been built by 7 ESA Member States (Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, The Netherlands, and Sweden). Germany is not part of this cooperative venture at all.
http://www.space-travel.com/reports/ESA_Conducts_Vega_Main_Engine_Test_In_Kourou_999.html

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The converse is also true. When there IS interaction with German companies this always spells disaster. The most current examples of the are EADS, Galileo and Endesa.

Though the technology behind EADS is primarily French (the ex. Matra satellites, Aerospatiale aircraft and helicopters, Ariane launchers, etc.) there is no intention on the part of the Germans to recognize this (though the US has formally recognized this in the dispute over the Airbus military transport contract for the US military). What I could have envisaged happening from the beginning, is that there is continuous fighting in this JV which includes German companies. Bickering over who should be the new CEO of this or that division, over which country should close more plants and layoff more workers, over the German wiring layout delays for the A380, over the new shareholder structure, etc, etc.. There seems to be nothing but bickering in EADS. The French are normally very savvy when it comes to management and strategy, but with EADS they could have chosen a lot better....

5 days ago the second Galileo test satellite, Giove-B was launched. Though Germany has very little capability in space (let alone in navigation), Germany had the overall management responsibility for the JV to build and deploy Giove-B. This finally took place over 2 years beyond schedule and with enormous cost overruns. The main reasons for this was grotesque (adolfian) mismanagement, and because of technical reasons (e.g. the German onboard computer exploding twice in the final phases of satellite integration). So much so that the Giove-B JV was dissolved and the management is now in the hands of the European Space Agency.

Another example is Endesa, Spain's main electricity utility company. E.on, Germany's main utility, made a hostile bid for Endesa which was rebuffed by the Spanish authorities, and Endesa was finally sold to the Italian utility Enel. There's nothing strange about a hostile takeover bid. Hostile takeover bids take place all the time. What was strange (adolfian) was the German way of going about this. Despite electricity utilites being strategic for a country, especially if the main operator, the German idea was to let the Spaniards have absolutely no say whatsoever in how the company would be run. It was basically "It is ze greeaat honor to be managed-ya by ze zuperioren-CChermann company! You should be ze thanking us-ya for ze great privilege-ya!!"
At which of course the Spaniards, turned a paler shade of purple, then yellow, then green, etc. The went completely nuts and then got down on their hands and needs and begged the Italians to make a counter-offer. Enel did so, and the Spanish authorities saw that it was successful. The Enel offer, however, was very different from that of E.on. The first step was to seek a Spanish partner, the Acciona company. Despite Enel finally getting the larger share in Endesa, it is Acciona who will nominate their (Spanish) CEO and have the final decision in the running of the company. Furthermore, as part of the deal, the Italian authorities have allowed for very high levels Spanish of participation and control in two large Italian conglomerates, i.e. Telecom Italia and the highway operator Autostrade.

The "adolfian" mentality, besides being fundamentally wrong, can also prove very expensive and alienating.

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