Stellantis, patents are scarce: flight from Italy also on innovation

The music doesn’t change. A few days after announcing the closure of the Mirafiori body shops until August because there are still no public incentives (even if the electric 500 is mainly sold abroad and the Maserati are not included in the subsidies because they are too high), yesterday the president of the group in Latin America, Emanuele Cappellanoannounced an investment plan from 400 million dollars in Argentina for the period 2025-2030 because there is “a lot of potential”. But if the growth plans abroad and the progressive desertification of Italian factories were not enough to reveal the plans for Stellantis (and of the Elkann-Agnelli) for the future, now another element is added. In addition to significantly reducing production, the group has also begun to abandon Italy on the innovation front.

The data comes fromEuropean Patent Office, the EU body where patents resulting from companies’ research and development activities are filed. From a car manufacturer like Stellantis, which thrives on technological progress and strategic innovation to be competitive in a fast-moving market supersonic speeds, one would expect it to inundate officials with avalanches of requests every year, clogging offices with paperwork and documentation. And instead, as reported by the Corriere di Torino, it turns out that last year the group led by a Carlos Tavares overpaid man who wants to conquer the world has presented the beauty of three patents. Three. Such poor stuff that it was seven surpassed by Lavazza, which instead filed 11 cases. Now, you might say, even making coffee requires cutting-edge technology. And this is not up for debate. But is it possible that a multinational automotive company can only produce three patents in one year?

PLACE OF REGISTRATION
The explanation, of course, is there. But it’s really not very comforting. It’s not that Stellantis has stopped innovating, just as it hasn’t stopped churning out new models and producing them. Simply it doesn’t do it anymore in Italy. Let’s be clear, the place of registration of a product or process technology does not necessarily correspond to the place where research and development is carried out. This is why, for example, Turin has always excelled in Italy over the years, second only to Milan, in the filing of paperwork. What benefited the Piedmontese capital was the presence of large specialized law firms precisely in the preparation of the documentation necessary to submit the requests. But this changes the substance of the facts little.

PARIS WINS
If Turin is the heart of the Italian automotive industry and is also a city full of tinkerers capable of preparing the cards, how do you explain those three meager patents presented by Stellantis? And here’s the answer. You want to know how many patents Stellantis has submitted in Paris? As many as 1,500, breaking every record and becoming the most innovative company in France, even ahead of Safran’s defense industry and tripling the volume of requests presented by competitor Renault. In short, the the problem is Italy (where a total of just 166 patents have been presented), not the group’s desire to experiment with new technological solutions. And all the clues seem to lead precisely to the Elkann, not to group strategies that casually penalize our country. The innovative collapse in Turin in fact concerns the entire industrial galaxy attributable to Exor, the family holding company. Also contributing to the significant drop in patents in the area was CNH Industrial, the agricultural machinery giant with 25 billion in revenues (27% controlled by Exor) which filed 36% fewer projects in 2023 compared to 2022, going from 94 to 39 requests. The other company controlled by the Agnelli heirs, Iveco, with its trucks and commercial vehicles, has instead presented 33 patent applications. Numbers which, however, keep the two brands in the league top of the regional ranking. Despite a general decline. Piedmont in fact recorded a decrease in applications (441) of 9.4%, with Turin stopping at 175 requests. It is no longer the automotive sector that is growing in the field of innovation, but other sectors: in addition to coffee, chemistry, aerospace and defense stand out, with companies such as Novamont and Microtecnica.