Carmaker Stellantis creates new data services business

(Reuters) - Carmaker Stellantis said on Thursday it was establishing a new business unit to help expand its data services business, part of its plans to boost revenue from software-related activities over the next decade.

The new unit, called Mobilisights, will license data to a wide range of customers including rival carmakers, drawing on Stellantis' connected vehicles, which are expected to total 34 million by 2030, up from around 12 million now.

Sanjiv Ghate, Mobilisights CEO, told reporters the business could help to reduce accidents by for example relaying information about road hazards, and also allow insurance products to be better tailored to individual drivers.

Setting up a separate unit should make it easier to establish partnerships, added Ghate, who joined Stellantis last year and is based in the San Francisco area.

Mobilisights will be a key contributor to the 20 billion euros in incremental annual revenues that Stellantis expects from software-related services by 2030, the company said in an announcement at the CES convention in Las Vegas.

Ghate would not be drawn on precisely how much revenue Mobilisights would be expected to contribute but said that Stellantis had a number of software units that would each be generating "north of a billion dollars".

It is the second of seven new value-added business units planned by Stellantis, whose brands include Fiat, Peugeot and Jeep. The first was the Circular Economy business, aiming to make more use of recycled material in production.

Overall, Stellantis is aiming to double revenue to 300 billion euros a year by 2030, at the same time as keeping profit margins high.

(Reporting by Gilles Guillaume in Paris and Keith Weir in London; Writing by Keith Weir; editing by David Evans)