PSA Group has set up the Low Emission Vehicles Business Unit dedicated solely to electric vehicles as it ramps up its plan to have an electrified offering of each of its model lines by 2025.

The French giant owns the Peugeot, Citroen and DS brands, and recently acquired the Opel and Vauxhall marques from General Motors.

PSA Group says it has created the Low Emission Vehicles Business Unit to “respond to the challenges of the energy transition and to build an efficient and coherent offering of electric mobility solutions”.

The new unit officially started business on April 1 and its responsibilities include defining and rolling out the company’s EV strategy and its related services and products.

Heading up the unit will be Alexandre Guignard in the role of senior vice-president of the BU (business unit), who will be responsible for the profitable development of the operations in all related regions.

He will also lead programs to help meet PSA Group’s CO2 targets as part of the 2020 and subsequent European standards.

For the past seven-and-a-half years, Mr Guignard was the senior vice-president of C and D programs in PSA’s corporate planning and programs unit, and before that he was senior vice-president automobile project director.

The new business unit will report directly to Citroen chief executive officer Linda Jackson who said the time was right for such a unit.

“The energy transition is an opportunity that our company has seized by launching an unprecedented technological offensive made possible by our multi-energy platforms,” she said.

“The challenge for this Business Unit, which benefits from an experience built up over several years within the Group, will be to provide the best vehicles at the best time to satisfy our customers and thereby ensure the best economic conditions for launching Groupe PSA’s electric vehicles into the market.”

As GoAuto has reported, PSA Group plans to offer an electrified version of all of its models by 2025, which the company’s chief executive Carlos Tavares has said will mean 40 electrified vehicles.

The auto-maker has also previously announced that it would condense all of its models to just two core platforms – the existing EMP2 platform and a new CMP (Common Modular Platform) that can support a variety of powertrains ranging from internal combustion engines to plug-in hybrids to fully electric.

In other PSA appointments, the former head of PSA Group’s electric vehicle programs Alain Raposo has been appointed senior vice-president, powertrain and chassis engineering.

Finally, Christian Chapelle will take over the ‘Monozukuri^’ operations department for the Middle East & Africa region.

According to PSA, Monozukuri is a Japanese term for a method of reducing costs across the entire value chain.

By Tim Nicholson