Carlos Tavares
Well, thank you, José. That's a lot of questions that, of course, need a lot of development. So I'll try to make it as focused as I can. And thank you for raising so many very important and interesting questions, I'm sure for you as much as for your peers. First of all, we see with our Italian teams enormous potential to improve fast because, of course, everything that we are already doing to deliver the 9.4% operating margin by H2 of 2020 is available to our FCA teammates in Europe.
So there is many, many things that can be used in a very efficient way very quickly. And we have a lot of references, a lot of internal benchmarks on everything that we have been doing between Peugeot, Citroën, DS, but also with Opel Vauxhall. So all of this is on the table. I see from our Italian teams a lot of interest. I would say they are really eager to jump and see what can be done. I know that they are doing this.
And by the way, I would like to thank them for being so open-minded in terms of grasping those opportunities. So yes, it is true that FCA Europe has a big opportunity to be using many of the assets, which are available in Europe coming from the PSA world. But not only, there will be also some of the assets coming from FCA that will be used also by PSA because this is exactly what a synergy means. Synergy means that you can do things that you would not be able to do on a stand-alone basis. And this is going to be both ways. This is something that I can tell you.
And I think it's going to move reasonably fast. Of course, you have the lead time of new projects, which generally speaking, is between two and three years on existing platforms and existing powertrains. But that may represent a very significant part of the synergies. What I can tell you is that all of those topics are coming to the governance bodies that I am sharing. And I have already – we have already decided on many of those over the last couple of weeks. And we do not forget, you and me, that the closing was on January 16.
And we are on March 3. So many of those decisions are already in execution mode, which is good news, and it is also the big demonstration that our teams are eager to use those assets and use those opportunities. It's going to be the same thing in powertrain. Of course, in terms of ICE, we do not intend to invest more. We are going to use the existing assets from both companies and trying to leverage everything we can and use the existing capacity as much as we can with the existing ICEs. We have very good proposals from both families.
I would say, smaller engines more from PSA, bigger engines more from FCA. And we see that those opportunities are going to allow us not to invest more despite the needs and despite the new norms, et cetera, which is great news in terms of synergies. And on the powertrain, I see a lot of cross sharing between the two families. I also see that in terms of electrification, everything we have invested in Europe is a blessing for Stellantis, the electric motors, the dual clutch transmission electrified, the battery packs, the battery cells. All of this is going to be available for FCA Europe, which is, I think, very good news to improve very quickly the performance of our sales.
And the only thing I can anticipate is that by 2025 – and please remember this, we'll be very happy by 2025 to be in control of the full value chain of the electric powertrains. We will be very, very happy in 2025. And by the way, that's a decision that we have made a couple – most of those decisions were made in 2014, 2015. And the battery cell company was decided last year, as you know well. In terms of software and autonomous vehicles, well, we have a great deal, a great deal that was crafted and negotiated by Mike with Waymo. It is a great partnership between – it was a great partnership between FCA and Waymo.
And now it's a great partnership between Stellantis and Waymo. So now we are going to execute this strategic partnership and make those autonomous vehicles with the Waymo software technology, which is the best way, of course, to learn, is to do things and of course, to come up with the appropriate projects that will be announced shortly. But you see, it's very simple. To a certain extent, PSA was coming with a lot of good things, good assets in terms of CO2 emission reduction, and FCA was coming with great things in terms of autonomous vehicles.
And now all of this is part of the assets that the family can enjoy. For the EV architecture, we are still working on the architectures. You have seen from the PSA presentation that we have two platforms, which are very much B and C segment dedicated platforms, the eCMP and the eVMP. The eVMP platform is going to give us a very strong improvement in terms of range, in terms of, I'm sure, satisfaction for the customers, given the range that will be offered because the packaging of the battery pack is absolutely efficient in the way it is sought out in the platform layout. Are those assets usable in U.S. with the caveat that they need to be federalized in some of their dimensions? The answer is yes.
Will we do it? We'll see. So far, it's too soon to say. We still have a lot of work to do. We are now preparing for the product strategy for the next 10 years for the 14 brands of Stellantis. So I think you can imagine 10 years' time window, 14 brands, product planning strategy, technology strategy. All of this needs to be combined. We are working very hard on that core model strategy, of course. It's moving very well and very fast. It's still a little bit premature for me to give you the details. But of course, one of the major drivers of this global initiative is to make sure that they are shared assets because those shared assets are the best levers we have to be more competitive than our peers.
And at the end of the day, through our efficiency, continue to invest in our future. This is where we are today. So could we use those assets in the U.S.? The answer is yes, as long as we federalize what we need to federalize based on the U.S. regulations. That's my answers to your questions, José. Thank you. Next question, please.
Carlos Tavares
Well, thank you, Thomas. As always, great questions, not easy ones. I would like to ask Richard to comment on the net cash position of Stellantis. I would like to say a few words about the R&D and CapEx and the dividend policy. The dividend policy will be presented to you later on. It's not the right timing for us to do that. The right timing right now is to close the loop on the deal that was concluded to create Stellantis. That's the sense of the dividend, the distribution that was announced, it's to close the deal-related to the merger. That's why we are proposing to the shareholders to make that decision in terms of distribution, close the deal of the merger. In terms of R&D and CapEx, I have presented to you the fact that I believe that we can stay below 8%.
Why? Because I can see the needs coming from the brands, including the brands that have been a little bit starved over the last few years. But I also can see the efficiencies and I believe that Stellantis can be one of the best players in the world for the efficiencies when we are doing the sister cars from leading cars, which means that we can be very efficient in the way we build the business plans that fly because our inter tickets and the way we have to engineer those sister cars is very competitive.
So I believe that being below 8% will demonstrate that we can, from one side, be very efficient. From the other side, if we have to rank the projects, we will, of course, cancel the ones which have the lowest value creation ratio, which then means that it is going to improve the overall margin, income margin rate of the company, as you, of course, understand. So the 8% ceiling comes from the efficiencies that I see, both from PSA and FCA, and I will give you two examples. I think that PSA is coming with a very clear understanding that we can do a sister car for a very competitive inter ticket. And I think that the FCA is coming with a very clear development process that is faster than the PSA one.
So from one side, they have one family telling me that they can do the things at a faster pace. From the other side, I have another part of the family that is telling me that they can do it in a more efficient inter ticket. So if I combine both, I should go fast and I should be very efficient at the end of the day. That's the reason why we create Stellantis, by the way. So I think you can easily, easily think that within two to 2.5 years, we can have some of those products on the market, which is something that is reasonable, given the fact that we will make top hats on existing platforms.
Horst Schneider
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Apart from that, I want to understand a little bit structural on premium cars, for example, if you want to continue to have the DS brand next to Alfa Romeo and Maserati. It appears from the outside that you have got now many small premium brands but not one large premium brands. So maybe you can explain a little bit on that. And the last one is on financial services. You want to have that in the future, again, fully owned by your group or you will continue that in your JVs?
Carlos Tavares
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And of course, you can count on your CEO and you can count on our CFO and the top management team to fight against the headwinds as strongly as we can. But of course, there are some other things we cannot always control. The second question was about the premium brands. Your point is valid. It's also about value creation. You see we have three premium brands, the DS brand, French sophistication; the Lancia brand, the Italian elegance; and the Alfa Romeo brand, which is an iconic brand, that needs to find a better fit with the potential target customers.
On those three brands, there is a huge amount of synergies that our brand CEOs are now working on. And this is the reason why you have seen that for each of those brand groups, there is one synergy reference. In this case, is the Alfa Romeo brand CEO, Jean-Philippe Imparato is in charge, of creating and executing those synergies within the brand group. So you can expect that those synergies between the Lancia, DS and Alfa Romeo are going to happen.
And of course, that is going to, to a certain extent, allow a better market coverage at the end of the day, against another scenario, which is the one that you have mentioned, and it is fair to mention that, why don't you have only one premium brand, which could be eventually your strategic thinking. So far, we are not there. So far, we believe that if we are quite strong with DS in France and neighboring countries, if we see that the Lancia has a big potential in Italy and neighboring countries, if we see that Alfa Romeo can do a better job everywhere in the world, starting with Europe and the U.S., it's because we believe that we can leverage the already visible equity value of those brands.
But your question remains valid. But for the sake of being totally transparent and honest with you, I must say that our first direction is to give to each of those brands a car model strategy and a chance to build the future based on the great achievements of the past. And that's why we have assigned one brand CEO for each of those brands. And as you know, we have Béatrice Foucher taking care of DS. Jean-Philippe Imparato taking care of Alfa Romeo and Luca Napolitano taking care of Lancia. So we are working on that.
And I can assure you that against having one single brand, I would say that if we have a strong amount of synergies between the three, perhaps we can enjoy the benefit of the synergies and at the same time, have a better market coverage. Perhaps this is where – and now we are working on the brand strategies that we are going to be reviewing between now and the summer break. That's what we are doing right now.
On the financials, what we are seeing is that we are enjoying. We are enjoying a significant collaboration, positive collaboration with our banking partners on PSA as much as on FCA. I think that we are going to leverage on those partnerships. I believe that we will simplify what we have today to make it more efficient and effective in each market we operate. But of course, this is still in the make. We are still discussing and appreciating the benefits of each scenario, but we will continue to enjoy strong partnerships with some of our current partners. That's clear.
And we'll see how we can use the potential of our partners to be more aggressive and more impactful in some of the business areas of our global business, starting with the leasing activity, which is, I think, a very important one for the future of our business. So this is right now in the making. We will be discussing these matters from the end of this month. And I think that by the summer, we'll have a clear direction on this matter. But so far, what is coming up is that we are happy with our partners and we will continue to leverage that moving forward.
@Davialfa Absolutely! Not to mention that mister Tavaresh had failed with PSA at 2 out of 3 markets. Markets where PSA was strong in terms of sales. He basically killed PSA in China and almost did it in South America. Every market, every brand, needs different approach. Something which may work for Peugeot and in France may not work for Fiat and Italy and for sure will not work for Alfa Romeo.
