Auto manufacturer family tree: Who owns what? | Hacker News Reader

Auto manufacturer family tree: Who owns what?

whichcar.com.au

276 pointsbatirch162 comments

Disclosure: I work for GM. Anything here is solely my own opinion or experience.

Fun fact: Chevrolet kind of bought GM. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gm-buys-chevrole...

> "Still the owner of a considerable portion of GM stock, Durant began to purchase more shares in the company as his profits from Chevrolet allowed. In a final move to regain control, Durant offered GM stockholders five shares of Chevrolet stock for every one share of GM stock. Though GM stock prices were exorbitantly high, the market interest in Chevrolet made the five-for-one trade irresistible to GM shareholders. With the sale, concluded on May 2, 1918, Durant regained control of GM"

And then after this the DuPont Family effectively controlled GM for quite a while. They previously had a relationship because GM used DuPont paints.

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As to the manufacturer family tree: things get significantly more complicated when you add joint ventures. Ford famously partnered with Mazda, Chrysler partnered with Mitsubishi, and GM partnered with Isuzu and Suzuki and even Toyota for a while (NUMMI). Nowadays GM and Honda have a few codevelopment projects; even the concept of what a joint venture means has significantly changed. My list is this comment is far from authoritative or exhaustive.

> Chrysler partnered with Mitsubishi

The epic "Diamondstar Motors" as I recall. Responsible for generations of kickass cars under different names. Conquest/Starion, Laser/Talon/Eclipse, Stealth/3000GT.

In addition, Chrysler had captive imports from Mitsubishi at least as far back as the 1971 Dodge Colt. The GM/Isuzu and Ford/Mazda relationships went back to the 1970s as well.

> As to the manufacturer family tree: things get significantly more complicated when you add joint ventures.

Yes, and even more complicated because some of those joint ventures where country-specific. For example, in the 80s (and early 90s) due to the economic crisis in Brazil and Argentina, Ford and Volkswagen created the joint venture Autolatina to join forces during the crisis. So both brands shared engines and released sight variations of the same cars.

Oh, the link between GM and leaded gasoline makes more sense in that context.

TEL had been identified chemically in the mid-19th century, but General Motors had discovered its effectiveness as an antiknock agent in 1921, after spending several years attempting to find an additive that was both highly effective and inexpensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead

Video treatment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA

I always wanted something like this but for all companies. I feel like it would be a great tool to help people understand how giant conglomerates are actually a big part of what we consume.

My favorite are outdoor clothing companies which almost all tie-in to the same Chinese investment fund. Or how glasses companies all belong to that one French conglomerate.

Here ya go (I knew I had seen it somewhere so I'm glad I managed to find it again). Here are some links to assorted sources about brands etc. It makes for fascinating reading imo

"These 10 Companies Own Almost All of the Brands You Use" https://thehomestead.guru/10-companies-own-brands/

https://gizmodo.com/fascinating-graphic-shows-who-owns-all-t...

https://www.dividend.com/how-to-invest/9-companies-that-own-...

https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/11-companies-that-own-ev...

https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendancoffey/2011/10/26/the-fo...

That first list is interesting because I recognize most of them as terrible products.

My mental model of brands was as a quality stamp, as in people would recognize a product from advertising but if they disliked the product then it wouldn’t help. But, I think there is a second effect in play. If you start with something of high quality that people consume regularly you can very slowly lower the quality without people noticing. Continue long enough and old brands are going to end up as lower quality.

“What do you call your act?”

“Brooks Brothers!”

The French newspaper "Le Monde diplomatique" made a very interesting family tree for media ownership in France: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA

Published on Github too https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais

Ideally, in a democracy, it should be open and transparent who owns what, up to the individual. That should be the basic principle of a free market.

Why? What does a system of voting have to with privacy?

good direction but impractical.. a tech lead at Starbucks quipped "we don't actually know how many people work at Starbucks right now" .. huh? because, though they do have modern cloudy tech, there is meat-space time involved in edge transition from state of employed to not-employed, etc. So it is true, even with "perfect" observation of events, the leaders have ranges, not hard numbers.

So it is with markets. There are indistinct conditions that may exist for some time, and decay, and financial privacy, etc. So even given "perfect" observation of events, it is not fully transparent.

Nor would you want it, I argue. Once you as an individual are involved with markets and partners and committed relationships, some faceless bureacracy is tracking your parking spending? or more to the point, your ownership stakes? So we must re-invent public markets. Too much to change at once, and imperfect cooperation, so.. set a direction. "messy"

Impractical? Isn't it already being done?

At least here in Norway, I can look up an organization and see all owners of that company last year. And press a button and it calculates the "true"/indirect owners up the chain as well.

I can also go the other way. Select a person, and see what they own through multiple layers of companies.

Interesting.

Is this a public service? Could you please give an url to know more about it? Thanks

All companies have to provide a list of owners each year to our tax agency Skatteetaten ("IRS"). The data isn't exactly publicly available AFAIK, but anyone can ask for access.

This is a company doing extra stuff with the data, and providing some of it directly online. Here's a lookup of the company I work for: https://proff.no/aksjon%C3%A6rer/bedrift/oda-group-holding-a...

It lists owners, but as you can see it's mostly "Holding Companies". However, pressing "Indirekte eierskap og eiere" ("Indirect ownerships") one can see the true companies or persons behind those.

Very insightful, thank you!

there is no rational comparison to the economy and laws of Norway, to that of the USA. Even with oil wealth, the population and value of the Norway economy amounts to a tiny percentage of the activity in the USA, and many, many USA-based companies are multinational. Hvordan kan du bruke Norges lover til å styre USA? alvor

Which brands are you talking about and could you point to something showing the ownership (not doubting you, just wondering). Looking up Patagonia, Columbia, and VF Corp (North Face, Timberland, etc) none of them appear to be Chinese owned, but its quite likely their Wikipedia page is missing info.

I know anta sports (Chinese) owns Arc'teryx and Salomon (and other brands as well), which are both big deals in very niche parts of outdoors companies (mountaineering/climbing and trail running/skiing respectively) but I don't think there's any single Chinese company that owns all the outdoor brands, unless anta is owned by some other company. Luxottica, the eyeglass company gp referred to is also Italian, not French (afaik), and their stranglehold was weakening with online retailers breaking in (last I checked was ~5 years ago, this might have regressed since).

Luxottica merged with Essilor in 2018. It's now a French-Italian company.

They own: Ray-Ban, Oakley, Michael Kors, Varilux, Crizal, Transitions, LensCrafters, Clearly, EyeBuyDirect, FramesDirect.com, OPSM, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut, Target Optical, Vision Direct, Vision Source, et al. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EssilorLuxottica

The more interesting/disgusting part is that they own EyeMed, so for many people they also get your insurance premium, and then also what you pay for glasses or whatever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica#Medical_managed_care

I personally view vertical integration much more favorably than the Borg-like horizontal consolidation Luxottica exhibits.

Consider that CostCo does the same thing and members are generally happy about it.

Hm, that looks like a good case for an anti-trust action.

I was thinking of Anta Sports (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anta_Sports) which owns a lot of skiing/mountaineering stuff but I was remembering wrong.

I guess you get good news every day!

I already don't buy Arc'teryx cause their stuff is way over priced but good to have yet another reason not to do so!

I liked their stuff more when it was made in Canada. Some of it is still pretty good and if you get on sale/clearance/used its not that bad. I've had some jackets for 10 years.

Same here - fond memories of visiting the factory to buy seconds in Vancouver. Recently had a bad experience with a failure of a brand new glove followed by lousy customer service - ended up just throwing away the thing. (The plural of anecdote is not data, I know...) But with so many alternatives that don't fund dictatorships I don't see why I should buy their stuff if I don't have too...

"~80% of the 50 largest public companies are connected to one another through 1 or more shared board member(s)" [1]

The "three most connected companies" through interconnecting directors are "3M (7 connections), Boeing (6 connections) and Amgen (6 connections)" ... "Other highly-connected companies include Walt Disney, Apple, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, IBM, and Procter & Gamble – each has five board members that also serve for other top 50 corporations." [2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/923c92/80_...

[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-largest-u-s-companies-bo...

I was recently looking at Tool brands and came across a similar article explaining how all the popular tool brands you know are owned by a handful of corporations.

https://toolguyd.com/tool-brands-corporate-affiliations/

Whenever I see that chart I feel gratified that I chose Makita when I was making the big battery decision a few years ago.

Personally, I lean to independent brands. I don't want my Milwaukee tools having all the same parts as the Ryobi line - makes me assume I'm being suckered into an identical tool that's way more expensive. Even if the Milwaukee is usually superior, I'm guessing some things just are exact copies with red paint. I'm the same way with say Patagonia over North Face - I'll always avoid VF Corp brands for something that's still building legacy, rather than profiting on historical credibility.

I guess the same is true with previous generation stuff. Abercrombie & Fitch, and Eddie Bauer used to be premier outdoor equipment companies with great down jackets and sleeping bags, fishing equipment, even shotguns. Now they're both brands representing clothes I don't want. Both brands sold and were aggregated with other companies in the late 1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Bauer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abercrombie_%26_Fitch

The eyewear conglomerate is Luxottica (Italian, not French).

EssilorLuxottica (merger in 2018) is a French company with an headquarter in Paris and the stock part of the French index CAC40.

They merged with Essilor, a French company, in 2018. Technically they are a Franco-Italian company.

And same for semiconductors. Everything seems to have been consolidating like mad.

I only skimmed trough it, but the section about Polestar is wrong. It says that their racing division was renamed Lynk & Co. Lynk & Co is a different car brand focusing on a subscription sales model. Polestar's racing division was renamed Cyan Racing. Polestar is also partly owned by Geely, which of course also owns Volvo which owns part of Polestar...

Geely recently bought the mobile phone manufacturer Meizu.

And a few months ago Tesla was valued more than all the brands on the list, combined. If that isn’t a sign of a stock market bubble I don’t know what is.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/14/tesla-valuation-more-than-ni...

Why would that be a sign of a bubble and not simply an overvalued stock?

if apple were worth more than all of the other personal computer makers combined (maybe it is idk) would that also be a sign of a bubble? is that all it takes or does growth rate matter?

Agreed, but remember that if you are thinking about betting against Tesla that the market can stay (much) longer irrational than you can stay solvent. There is a quote from the early 20th century: "Wall Street's graveyards are filled with men who were right too soon."

When VW stocks went through the roof due to a short squeeze a few years ago, a very conservative German billionaire named Adolf Merckle saw that VW's stock value was ridicilously overpriced, so he decided to bet agains the stock. But the stock price went further up and stayed there long enough to make him lose all of his money. He then committed suicide.

Interesting fun fact - the Japanese sub-brands were mostly created to get around US import restrictions. At the time, the US had super imposing quantity limitations on Japanese cars. So the workaround was the companies spun off luxury companies (Lexus, Acura, Infiniti) so they could sell fewer cars at a higher markup.

Acura launched first, since Honda already had a factory in the US (originally for motorcycles). Honda was still smaller than Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Toyota at the time, iirc. That factory is still the oldest operating, US factory from a foreign automaker.

Amusingly, the import restrictions were "voluntary," as much as geopolitics can be voluntary.

Anyone interested in this should dive into the NHTSA data. Something like “make by manufacturer” explains this quite nicely, albeit without the history that the article nicely explained. Example: https://transportation.report/manufacturer/976/

It’s not mentioned in the article, but Toyota owns 20% of Subaru

Written from a Australian perspective & is missing some US marques, like that Honda owns Acura and Ford owns Lincoln

I found Škoda description lacking. Being one of few historic Czech car manufacturers is mention worthy.

Also, one of the oldest car manufacturers in the world.

And a maker of great value practical cars - my last 3 cars (and my wife's last 2 cars) have all been Škodas.

However, I was disappointed that they stopped making the Yeti.

Are Skoda cars with DSG transmissions reliable in Europe?

They're unreliable where I'm from.

Otherwise, they make fabulous desirable cars.

We've had 3 DSG cars between us - no problems so far. Mind you, they were under warranty and we get them regularly serviced.

My current car is a 1l 3-cylinder DSG Kamiq - which I am pretty happy with. Only complaint being the slow starting touch screen and the move away from physical buttons (e.g. for heated windscreen).

Wow that's pretty cool.

Over here it's only a matter of time before DSG inevitably fails.

Apparently, it tends to overheat when idling in traffic in D. This is also a problem in VW cars which uses the same gearbox.

It's a really hot climate where I live; I wonder if that's a factor.

The good thing is that Skoda/VW don't hesitate before replacing a failed gearbox (and then that one fails).

It's a lovely gearbox when it works.

"it tends to overheat"

I'm in Scotland, so it rarely gets above 20C and it quite often fairly damp - which presumably keeps the gearbox nice and cool :-)

Edit: We also very rarely sit in traffic, which might help as well.

Still, other gearboxes work well here. So maybe there's a design fault somewhere.

There's a Wikipedia entry for DSG problems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-shift_gearbox#Problem...

I'm now a complete convert to DSG style gearboxes. Mind you next car will hopefully be electric so problem goes away - probably an Enyaq.

It's also missing the newer manufacturers like Rivian, Lucid, Nio, and Xpeng, though their absence is somewhat understandable.

Acura is mentioned in the accompanying text.

yeah, I mean it isn't shown on a slide... if Lexus & Genesis are shown, Acura & Lincoln probably should be too

Ferrari is listed as independent (rightly,) but it is owned in a big part by the Agnelli family (Exor) who own also a big part of Stellantis.

No employee in the Ferrari factory has a non-Stellantis car (Alfa Romeo or Maserati preferably)

So I think it should be clarified that Ferrari and Stellantis (specifically Fiat) are related

Exor (the Agnelli's) owns 14.35% of Stellantis and 22.91% of Ferrari.

I know that Ford takes a lot of flak (deservingly in many cases) but I've always been very impressed by how consistently the company has seemingly been run. If I remember correctly, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I don't, they are the only one of the 'Big 3' American auto manufacturers to not need a bailout.

Ford is bipolar. On one hand some models are pure garbage. Then on the other hand their F-150 truck is incredible. Mustang and new Bronco are also loved.

One of the things that Ford has, which GM and Chrysler did not, is the continued heavy involvement of the founding family. There are two classes of Ford stock, one for family and one for everyone else. The holders of the family shares have a way-outsized voting influence on the board, and can bring a great deal personal interest and scrutiny into how the company is run. Always remember whose name is on the side of the building.

Yes and no.

Ford did not participate in the explicit bailout for the auto industry, but their financial arm did receive loans from the federal government. (GM and co. also received this type of assistance in addition to the bailout.)

There was a time when Ford owned a bunch of brands at the same time which made them quite a large car company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Company#Former_marq...

I was very surprised to see they were listed as stand alone in that list.

The list seems to be Australia-centric. In the US Ford still owns the Lincoln brand as well.

Watch Ford vs Ferrari to get an idea of what Ford is like. Also be aware that you are not their customer. Their dealers are their customers. This is why a Shelby with an MSRP of $60k goes for $90k, while a faster $72k MSRP Camaro goes for <$70k. Ford makes limited runs so dealers can put insane markups, while GM makes cars for people to buy. (Bonus, when GT350s' rear differentials overheated on the track, Ford said "The GT350 is not a track car" - Shelby is rolling in his grave). Ford's "halo" car is $300k MSRP, GM's is $190k. Guess which one you can actually buy. I have owned three Mustangs including a GT500, and tracked them, and will never buy Ford again.

>Also be aware that you are not their customer. Their dealers are their customers.

> Ford makes limited runs so dealers can put insane markups, while GM makes cars for people to buy.

Didn't they just announce fixed price direct to consumer sales for EV's?[1] Regardless, I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. Dealers reap the markups, not Ford, and they're hardly moving any of those trims compared to the F-150 and other "normal" vehicles. If anything it's hurt them. The Focus RS was arguably axed because of dealer greed[2]. Of course Shelby has more fanboys, Chevy doesn't have an equivalent. Ford has made non-Shelby Mustang Cobras in the past and currently have the Mach 1 to replace the Shelby GT350. Having shopped for both I can say with confidence that regular Camaros trims in general tend to be higher marked up than Mustangs because their production volume is much lower, especially with the 1LE package. Ford churns out performance pack Mustangs like they're base models.

[1] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/ford-ceo-wants-future-of-online...

[2] https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/07/barks-bites-focus-...

>Dealers reap the markups, not Ford

Because the dealers are Ford's customers, not us. Ford makes the dealers happy.

>Didn't they just announce fixed price direct to consumer sales for EV's?

Because they really have to. EVs will be the end of dealers, as Tesla has demonstrated. Tesla has put Ford in a difficult position. Given how dealer friendly Ford is (see above), it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Might simply be that they simply have separate ICE/EV relationships until ICE goes away.

>Ford has made non-Shelby Mustang Cobras in the past and currently have the Mach 1 to replace the Shelby GT350.

Mach 1 MSRP $56k. My local dealer has one for $79k.

>Having shopped for both I can say with confidence that regular Camaros trims in general tend to be higher marked up than Mustangs because their production volume is much lower, especially with the 1LE package.

LOL. My last mustang was a PP and I had to special order it and wait months to avoid paying an extra $10,000 just for shit I didn't want. Sure, at $35k (2016) it was good value for money. I still got the limp mode on the track because of the rear diff, but at least I didn't pay $90k for that privilege!

> Because the dealers are Ford's customers, not us. Ford makes the dealers happy.

Repeating the same thing isn't an explanation and that doesn't make any sense. What incentive does Ford have to do that? They arguably lost the Focus RS because of what you're claiming and I provided a link to it. It doesn't help them sell more vehicles and these are only low volume to begin with. Dealers depend on Ford, not the other way around. As the other article I linked pointed out, Ford is moving to direct consumer sales.

> Mach 1 MSRP $56k. My local dealer has one for $79k.

Yes, we know markups exist. Not all dealers do that and it's trivial to find them. https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/threads/2022-mustang-mach-1...

> LOL. My last mustang was a PP and I had to special order it and wait months to avoid paying an extra $10,000 just for shit I didn't want. Sure, at $35k (2016) it was good value for money. I still got the limp mode on the track because of the rear diff, but at least I didn't pay $90k for that privilege!

Are you bragging that you got ripped off? I bought mine new, under MSRP last year. Performance pack Mustangs are easy to come by sitting on dealer lots at MSRP new and even easier used. I wanted an SS 1LE, but I bought a Mustang instead because I was able to get it new for the same price as 3 year old Camaro.

The production volume doesn't even compare. Ford moves significantly more Mustangs annually[1] than Chevy does the Camaro[2], and for the past 3 years it's been 2x as many. Camaros are much harder to come by and hold their value far better used. Unfortunately for me as a buyer it made me favor the Mustang because it made more sense financially. Still a fun car and better for modding, but I would have preferred an SS 1LE over my GT PP

[1] https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/ford-mustang-sales-figures/

[2] https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/chevrolet-camaro-sales-figures...

I wouldn't consider that movie as an accurate depiction of Ford. The actual GT40 race car benefited greatly by the expertise and resources of Ford. For example they created a computerized(!) drive train simulator that ran the engine and transmission through hundreds of pre-programmed laps. This enabled them to continually refine the drive train and improve reliability.

The movie makes it look like scrappy Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles were simply smarter than the clowns at Ford but that's not the whole story.

I assume you mean the Ford GT costing $300k. What car from GM sells for $190k? Is it a rare special edition of the Corvette? The base car is $60k, and even the Z06 starts around $90k.

The Corvette ZR1 has the same times around a track (e.g. VIR) as the (new) Ford GT. The C7 Z06 is as fast as the older (2005) one.

However, these don't tell the whole story. The GT is pretty highly strung whereas the Corvette's have a lot of room to improve with relatively inexpensive upgrades.

Is there a version of the ZR1 that's $190k (...currently available)? I thought it started at around $125k.

Overall the Corvette is the halo car... with a range from $60k up to about $125k. But I haven't actually walked into a dealer and asked them how much they'd want to order me up a ZR1 :)

It'd be interesting to see this expanded into the secondary supply chains, and the primary factories, all of which may or may not be owned by the car corporations themselves.

These networks sprawl out pretty quickly, I imagine. Modern cars rely on microcontrollers and microprocessors, and without chip fabs that comes to a halt. They also require varying amounts of steel, aluminum, carbon fiber, other plastics and metals, and natural rubber.

Then there's the physical locations and the international ownership / leasing / agreement structures. For example, Rust Belt manufacturing of vehicles in the USA for the US market has mostly relocated to Mexico:

https://napsintl.com/mexico-manufacturing-news/mexicos-auto-...

> "According to Forbes, about 80 percent of the cars manufactured in Mexico are exported globally, with about two-thirds of those exports going to the United States. In 2014, the industry comprised about $19 billion in investments. Production for that year was estimated to reach 3.2 million cars, double what it had been five years prior."

A network map of everything that went into a Mexican-made vehicle that was purchased in the USA would be highly complex, and if you then asked for an ownership map of all the shell companies, holding compenies, investors, primary owners etc. involved, the complexity would likely increase by a factor of ten.

Just tracking the global production and ownership of raw lithium and electric car battery manufacturing, for example, would be a fairly massive undertaking.

building out a massive BOM for all platforms would be next to impossible because it would require forcing OEMs to disclose their contracts with Tier 1 suppliers. I totally agree with you becasue that would be such a cool thing to do

While "ownership" is often interpreted in terms of value-flows and control, the model of Ikea's corporate structure indicates that actually modeling value-flows and control would be more helpful than using "ownership" as a proxy.

IKEA’s organizational structure might sound a bit confusing at first, but I looked into it to see how its business model works so that you could gain clarity on that.

Put it shortly, IKEA as a brand comprises two separate owners. INGKA Holding B.V. owns the IKEA Group, the holding the group.

At the same time that is held by the Stichting INGKA Foundation, which is the owner of the whole Group. IKEA Group is not the owner of the brand, which is managed by Inter IKEA Systems B.V., part of Inter IKEA B.V. that is the real owner of the IKEA Concept.

Thus, IKEA Group is a franchisee that pays 3% of royalties to Inter IKEA Systems.

https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-ikea/

Stellantis is like the new Step parent to a bunch of step children that were given up for adoption by their biological parents. Some premier brands but also a lot of second tier brands and smaller brands overall. I wonder if they can keep so many brands afloat. Over the last 20 years or so the larger MFGs have shed brands and consolidated.

They mostly keep releasing the same car under different brands, so the cost for brand differentiation with respect to actual car production is pretty much the same as if it was a single brand. They even add non-Stellantis brands to it, e.g. Toyota (for example, see their European range of small, medium and large vans).

Wow, somehow I was unaware that Hyundai now owns the majority of Kia.

You ever notice how similar their models are? Nearly all of their line ups are clones with different trim.

They don't the majority. Hyundai owns 1/3 of Kia and Kia actually is a partial owner in several Hyundai subsidiaries.

I stand corrected: they owned 51% back in 1998 but more like a third now.

Ah yes.. Chaebol's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol

Even though Volkswagen (VW) owns cars like Porsche and others, it should be mentioned that Porsche SE controls and owns majority in VW.

Exactly. As it is labelled as owner tree, Porsche (the Porsche and Piesch families) owns VW and all its subsidiaries, esp. Audi.

But technically Audi owns the whole group. VW doesn't plan and design the engines, gearboxes and cars, Audi does. VW is more a logistics and SW company now, just with a big brand name, with the cheaper "Audis" labelled as VW.

Porsche designed the beetle (to the sketches of an Austrian painter). VW was founded for making beetles and they did that for decades. VW combined with Audi. Audi people designed the Golf that was the opposite of the beetle. It was a great success.

Porsche SE is a holding company though - it doesn't directly make cars.

Porsche cars are made by Porsche AG which is a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG - Porsche SE then holding a controlling stake in Volkswagen AG.

Correct, but they do pull the strings (the Porsche family).

Also, to be more precise than the original article, Volkswagen AG is the parent company, which owns a number of brands, including Volkswagen and Audi.

Wow, I don't follow car news recently, so just now discovered Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat and Opel have same owner now (Stellantis), still can't comprehened how could be such merger approved by regulators.

Also was aware that Nissan and Renault cooperate, but didn't know there is also Mitshubishi with them. Btw. Adobe Acrobat logo would like to have a word.

That's when GM had his crisis and sold of all its non-US brands Opel, Vauxhall and so to PSA. It was a big mess.

Then just recently FCA and PSA formed Stellantis.

PSA and Fiat worked together previously, as their van the Fiat Ducato is basically the same as the vans from PSA group and the same as the Iveco Daily. They closely worked also together in other areas.

The small cars by Fiat was also partly joined development with Opel in the mid 1990. That relationship worked loosely for years, even while Opel still was part of GM.

Also later, as an example I have a 2006 Opel (Vauxhall) Vectra C 1.9 TD, the engine (and well as the Saab 9-3 one) is a FIAT one, and they share quite a few "common" parts outside the engine with the Fiat Croma.

While being not even the biggest in total number of sales (wikipedia says fifth). I still find it strange that it's a Dutch company (and Fiat Chrystler before it), since the Netherlands has no local-origin car manufacturer since DAF-Cars was sold to Volvo in the '70.

The reason for being a Dutch company is purely for a taxation advantage, and it goes back to the fact that FIAT/FCA moved its headquarters to the Netherlands under Marchionne's leadership. Other italian companies (Mediaset owned by Berlusconi Family) did this too recently: ( https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2021/09/18/mediaset-la-sede... )

no it was not taxation but legal reasons. as it takes years in italy to get a decision from judges.

The Netherlands entire business is to be a tax haven inside the EU market.

Their hobby is telling other countries that they suck because their economy is bad (partly because of NL being a tax haven).

> The Netherlands entire business is to be a tax haven inside the EU market.

while taxation in NL is lower than other countries like italy or French, it is not a tax haven, which is a precise definition that involves also border line legal activities.

what you maybe mean is that NL was able to lower taxes on companies because they understand their values, while other nations decided to go for a "tax the sh*t out of everything" and now they are surprised that companies are closing or moving to other nations.

the actual reasons for FCA and Mediaset to move to NL was more about legal : on average in italy you get a decision in 5 years, in NL on average it takes 6 months.

I think Netherlands is just a convenient place for European multinationals to incorporate. ST Micro, another Italo-French company is incorporated there for example.

I always thought ST Micro was based in Geneva.

from Wikipedia:

    While STMicroelectronics corporate headquarters and the headquarters for EMEA region are based in the Canton of Geneva, the holding company, STMicroelectronics N.V. is incorporated in the Netherlands.

It's registered in the Netherlands for tax and regulatory purposes.

I faintly recall that this was in part a response to VW growing too big in the years before. Before the merger Fiat, who was struggling at the time, tried to fusion with Renault but the French government blocked it.

Maybe someone has more information than me.

Something that went amiss in the graph is the Samsung Car division that Renault took direct ownership a while ago.

Page seems down? Here's the Google Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BWE--R...

Given the recent influx of EVs, some of these charts explain why certain brands seem to have launched them now.

Hyundai, kia and Genesis for instance, share the same ev platform.

Volvo and polestar too,with their EVs.

Audi, Vw, Porsche too have all launched EVs with surprisingly similar specs ( especially in terms of miles/kwh).

These ownership trees help explain why, clearly.

Related ... 10 companies control the food industry:

https://www.businessinsider.com/10-companies-control-the-foo...

https://archive.is/7eOPd

Related...six companies that control the media:

https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own...

Related ... the top 1% of people control 90% of wealth

Stellantis is a monster.

The original mother company of Fiat/FCA (Exor, controlled by the Agnelli family) now merged in Stellantis, also own stakes in Ferrari, CNH Industrial (New Holland Tractors, Case and other industrial and farming equipements), Iveco and a bunch of other brands. Quite a concentration of companies.

Stellantis and VW were pretty much tied in 2021.

https://www.factorywarrantylist.com/car-sales-by-manufacture... places Stellantis with 30% lower production than VW in 2021.

But the thing that's super stark is how many marquees Stellantis have; I can't help but think that some consolidation and focusing of resources would be beneficial (and I'm well aware that plenty is shared already).

They keep all the marquees because they sell better in the various European national markets, but many models are now the same platform with some small aesthetic changes. For example the new electric citroen berlingo / fiat doblo / opel combo are the same car:

https://www.citroen.it/modelli/berlingo/elettrico.html

https://www.fiat.it/e-doblo/e-doblo

https://www.opel.it/veicoli/gamma-combo/combo-e-life/panoram...

Heh, I debated putting a second paragraph about this. And yes, while it's not like they're paying the entire cost of developing a car from scratch each time, there's still a lot of duplication of work.

They still have a fair number of unique parts, they still have a fair amount of individual development and certification, they still have their own parts supply chains… these all add costs compared with literally having the same vehicle.

It's not that I see no reason to have multiple marques—after all, there is meaningful differentiation between the different VW ones, for example. But at some point you've got to stop and ask when you have too many.

Yes and unfortunately that's what Chrysler are well known for. Hopefully their culture of churning rebadged (I am a bit harsh here) car has died with the merger of all of those corporation.

Chrysler has been taken over by different entities throughout the last 40 years but somehow managed to drag the new owner down every time. A bit like Rover before the Chinese takeover.

Nit: it's marques (brand of car), not marquees (cinema entrance).

They’ve given all the brands a budget and a time box to turn things around. Those that do will be retained, the others will go. My wife was a chemist there for a few years, since before it became Stellantis.

Stellantis is where all the brands with slipping or already low quality go, so having a lot of different brands at various price points is their thing.

That's unfair. Maybe that was somewhat true to an extent for the American part of FCA, but isn't for PSA and Opel. The latter were in not great shape under GM for decades, but were turned around by PSA in a few years. Peugeot, Citroen, DS, Opel have good reputation.

I don't know in the last 5 years, but Opel had a lot of different faults due to cost cutting measures, and depending of the model and the year of the different Peugeot and Citroën, it has or not lot of problems.

One one hand, we have the examples of those models that had the infamous FAP HDi 110 hp engine that gives a lot of problems, and Citroën's "Hydractive" (hydropneumatic) suspension was discarded due to the many problems they gave. We had a 1st gen Citroën C5, that had those two, and it needed to visit the garage every every 2 year to have some pretty costly repairs. Also, some of their newer cars with AdBlue have factory design problems in this system, and repairing that module is knowing that is gonna be relatively expensive and it's gone to fail in the future.

On the other hand, we had models like the Xsara, the 206, the 406, the C15, the Partner/Berlingo combo, and many others that were very reliable cars that rarely had problems.

Peugeot seem to be doing ok in terms of quality in the last decade. It seems to me that they do a lot of horizontal segmentation, having the same cars sold under different brands in different markets.

I did not know TATA owns Land Rover and Jaguar!

I worked for Jaguar Land Rover for 7 years. It almost never came up. I would say that most of the company operates independently. Occasionally we would engage with Tata's other arms (I recall early on doing work with TCS - Tata Consulting Services to do some software development.)

Sometimes as I'm out and about I'll see old Ford-era Jaguars and I'm pleased that the company has independence to make its own vehicles.

That's when Ford hat its problems in the 2008 crisis and sold off its then so-called Ford Premium Group that consisted of Volvo and Jaguar.

That's after it bought DeLorean for their time machine business I assume.

edit: "after it will have brought" I guess

Sorry, wrong key pressed. Thanks. Fixed it.

Nooo now my comment is not funny anymore :)

If your forum has a working "edit" button, you can revise history in your favor...

Interestingly, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) which many people on HN would recognize, is a publicly traded company- yet something like 70% of it's shares are owned by Tata Group, and it's a massive part of their income.

> it's a massive part of their income I'm pretty sure the income is massive, but it might not be where the majority of the money comes from.

Tata is a huge conglomerate with businesses that apparently have nothing to do with each other.

Steel, Salt, coffee/tea, hotel chains, multiple airlines, IT, car companies, watches, financial companies, phone companies (?), jewellery, air conditioners, the list goes on.

(Whether any of their products are good is a different matter; it may or may not be — I don't really know.)

Tata motors in India has been pretty good over the last few years. They now make very desirable products designed for the Indian market — ie., spacious, efficient, practical cars with good enough performance, reliability, high scores in GNCAP crash tests, at a price which a lot of Indians can afford.

Tata cars probably won't win any races, but they have finally figured out the pulse of the Indian market.

From wikipedia, Tata Group is worth $300B.

Tata Group owns 70% of TCS, which is worth $200B.

Also this: > more than 70% of Tata Sons' dividends were generated by TCS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Consultancy_Services

TCS is around half the value of Tata.

They bought it from Ford when they decide to desinvest from their European luxury brands (after Jaguar didn't manage to compete with BMW).

mazda still going strong, with toyota owning just 5% of it. excellent, as their mx5/miata is a gem of car.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toyota-mazda-idUSKBN1AK0R...

https://www.automotiveworld.com/news-releases/mazda-continue...

It would be interesting to see this for auto component companies. For example AC Delco used to be owned by GM, then was spun off as part of Delphi, which changed its name to Aptiv.

This misses the stake Toyota has in Subaru

Good of Stellanis to buy/own all of the companies that my Dad told me not to buy cars from :D

Btw if you put Lexus under Toyota and Infinity under Nissan, you should also put Acura under Honda, all of these are equivalents of luxurious subbrands of mother brands.

This is great. If I was more motivated, I'd look up some sales data and make a treemap to represent the relative size of these brands.

I've seen something like this in Car & Driver print magazine, circa September 2017 or so.

(Memory could be off on time and which publication..)

One thing is for sure, ever since daimler and chrysler were joined at the hip, mercedes vehicle quality dropped like a stone.

It's too bad that Saab is gone.

Very cool, thanks for sharing

Before buying any Volvo or Polestar consider that those are owned by China.

Almost without a doubt, so is the company that made the device you are typing on. Likewise, the chair you are sitting on. If you are standing, there is a good chance one of the articles of clothing on you are "owned by China". If you are driving today, a vast majority of the parts in your car were made in China by Chinese companies. The brakes that you depend on were made in China, as were the spark plugs which ignite the fuel (most likely not domestic) that is transferred through the gears (of Chinese origin). The energy moving the Chinese made differential being transferred to the axels and eventually the tires, made in China, to the road, perhaps financed via Chinese loans.

But yeah, buying a Volvo is what keeps the CCP in power.

silly “all or nothing” dichotomy. it is, gradual, consistent efforts that change status quo

Tesla is mistakenly listed as having been founded by Elon Musk. (See e.g. Wikipedia for accurate information.)

He's LEGALLY a founder (as per the lawsuit)... but I get your meaning.

He can call himself however he wants (he’s also completely unqualified to be called an engineer), but money cannot buy facts.

> he’s also completely unqualified to be called an engineer

What qualifies someone as an engineer? Math? What kind of math?

Building stuff? What kind of stuff?

Writing code? What languages count and what languages don’t? Does CSS count?

Or are you talking about some kind of academic certification or standardized exam?

It seems like you are basing someone’s engineering prowess based on their personal, social, political antics.

> What qualifies someone as an engineer?

Depends on the country. In some, it's a certification that comes with responsibilities, in others it's just a job. In any case:

1) he hasn't got anything that comes close to an engineering qualification (no, dropping off a Ph.D. after a a B.Sc. is not enough);

2) his job does not involve anything like an engineer's job, which is to "invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost." [1]

He is very good at ordering people around, but there is no evidence that he did any of this at any point (though there is a lot of evidence that he got some underlings to do the boring work for him). Again, dumping a pile of money on someone to do it is not the same thing. I can respect that he did take some risks with his investments.

Even if you have an axe to grind and are frustrated by some people not considering software engineering as "proper engineering" (which is how I read your post, though Musk certainly is not a software engineer either), writing CSS for a living is closer to engineering than what Musk is doing.

[1] e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer

> Depends on the country. In some, it's a certification that comes with responsibilities, in others it's just a job. In any case:

Yes, this was a rhetorical question. Those countries that require a certification is not relevant to the discussion, because Elon Musk is operating out of America which does not require a certification to be a software engineer. In which case, by your definition, it's just a job or more specifically a job title. That's useless information because then people without a job title or don't care for one aren't engineers, and people who have the job title would automatically be an engineer. So if Elon Musk changes his job title to engineer instead of CEO, is he qualified now? Maybe he should prefix Senior to the title while he's at it.

> 1) he hasn't got anything that comes close to an engineering qualification (no, dropping off a Ph.D. after a a B.Sc. is not enough);

So people who don't have a Ph.D. aren't engineers?

> his job does not involve anything like an engineer's job, which is to "invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost."

Yes, he's a CEO. Are the CEOs of Google and Facebook still engineers if they aren't writing code? And what kind of complex system? Are organizations not complex systems?

> there is no evidence that he did any of this at any point

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If you're an engineer, you should understand this.

How do you think someone gets accepted into an engineering PhD, drop out or not, if they've never did any of this at any point in their life?

> In which case, by your definition, it's just a job or more specifically a job title.

Yes, a job title he bought, which is just as meaningful as the "Tesla founder" title he bought himself.

> So people who don't have a Ph.D. aren't engineers?

The issue is not the lack of a ph.D. It's the lack of anything beside a B.Sc.

> Are the CEOs of Google and Facebook still engineers if they aren't writing code?

Well, those who did an engineer's job are former engineers. If the status is tied to the job title as you imply, then no, a CEO is not an engineer.

> Are organizations not complex systems?

Not one you invent, design, analyze, build, or test. I mean, yes, you can stretch the meaning to the point that putting a motherboard in a PC case is engineering, but don't expect to be taken seriously. Same if you include all bureaucrats and politicians (and a country is vastly more complex than Tesla so they would have a better claim).

IANAL, but it more like the company has a legal obligation to tell that story and let him call himself a founder, but it's an out-of-court settlement, so we're free to call him an early investor and leave it at that. Now if Tesla to make a libel claim against the sources saying Eberhard and Tarpenning were the real founders, it can.

This is absurd, and as bad as him being listed as the "Chief Engineer" at SpaceX

They're different. Rewriting history to say you're a founder is delusional. Giving yourself the title of "chief engineer" is akin to being the mascot of the company.

I see something like Chief Engineer no different from Executive Producer on movie or tv show...

> Tesla – Founded 2003

> It was founded by former PayPal owner Elon Musk

Hah. Nope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Founding_(2003%E2%...

> A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five – Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk, and Straubel – to call themselves co-founders.

Granted, he wasn't there to sign the articles of incorporation, but he joined very early.

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