Peugeot ready to adjust Huawei partnership if U.S. demands

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Peugeot Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said on Tuesday the French carmaker would adjust its partnership with China’s Huawei if authorities in the United States make it a precondition for approving a merger with Fiat Chrysler.

Peugeot needs the consent of U.S. authorities to complete a $50 billion merger with Fiat Chrysler at a time when Washington is urging its European allies to exclude Huawei from the continent’s telecoms infrastructure.

“We have a partnership with Huawei, which is linked with another partnership with French telecom company Orange , we are not in direct relationship with them. But of course on this matter, we will listen to the American authorities and of course we will follow all their instructions”, Tavares told a conference call on Tuesday.

“If there was any question or any guidance from the American authorities, we would be eager to follow them”, Tavares said.

So far, France has ruled out discriminating against Huawei as a vendor for the country’s 5G networks.

Peugeot in 2017 partnered with Huawei to develop a cloud-based connected vehicle system which has been deployed on six million cars in Europe and China.

(Reporting by Edward Taylor in Frankfurt and Gilles Guillaume in Paris; Editing by Mark Potter)