Fiat Chrysler will pay Tesla to avoid billions of dollars in fines



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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has reached an agreement with Tesla to include cars from Silicon Valley's automaker into its fleet in the European Union, reducing FCA's average emissions ahead of new European regulations regulations in force in 2021. Tesla millions of euros' from the sale of these emission credits, according to the Financial Times.

This system is similar to the way in which regulatory credits can be bought and sold in the United States, a stable (albeit relatively small) activity for Tesla for many years. The electric car maker has realized $ 103 million in emissions credits in 2018, $ 280 million in 2017 and $ 215 million in 2016, according to a recently released financial report.

FCA, which owns brands like Jeep and Dodge, announced in mid-2018 its intention to spend 9 billion euros (or just over 10 billion dollars) by 2022 to add more electric cars and hybrids to its range. However, analysts said this would probably not be enough to avoid multi-billion euro fines for exceeding the EU target of 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer on average across the entire fleet. from a car manufacturer. In 2018, the average Fiat Chrysler was estimated at 123 grams per kilometer.

The FCA fleet's average emissions are not only among the worst in the industry, but the US Department of Justice has also sued the US automaker for allegedly using software to persuade regulators to think that its cars were compliant. The FCA has settled these charges for an amount of $ 800 million without admitting the existence of wrongdoing, but it has also recently recalled nearly a million vehicles in the United States for violation of emission standards.

Tesla achieved a turnover of $ 21.4 billion in 2018, of which $ 7.2 billion in the last quarter alone. Hundreds of millions of euros will therefore only represent a small portion of the revenues generated by the company. But Tesla may still need help with his money this year. Although the company did not release financial figures for the first quarter of 2019, last week it announced a quarterly drop in shipments for the first time in almost two years. And CEO Elon Musk said in February that he did not expect the company to make a profit in the first quarter after posting consecutive profits for the first time in its second half of 2018.

Tesla ended the year 2018 with $ 3.7 billion in cash, but $ 920 million was used to pay part of the company's $ 11 billion debt maturing in March. After the release figures, some typically bullish Wall Street analysts (such as Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley) felt the builder had used up more of these reserves during the quarter. Jonas and others also felt that Tesla would need to collect more money this year, which Musk denied.

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