The headline seems dramatic, but a surprising number of executives are leave Stellantis Norther America. (Stellantis is a recent merger that combines Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram with Fiat and Peugeot). One dealer said of the departures, “They’re all coming on top of each other.” Here’s who left and why Stellantis may not be in trouble after all.

The latest goodbye was from Mamatha Chamarthi who has been with Stellantis since 1996. In that time she rose to the position of Chief Information Officer (in 2019) and led the company’s entire software business. She’s 54 and said she’s leaving to take a role elsewhere.

Chamarthi isn’t the only software executive to leave. Berta Rodriguez-Hervas, head of all artificial intelligence development, is also out. This is immediately after the two hosted a software demonstration for the press, projecting their departments will generate $22 billion for the company by 2030.

The honest truth is that designing software for electric vehicles is proving harder than any automakers expected. After years of struggle, Volkswagen Group shut down its software division (named Caria). The VW CEO actually resigned and the company announced a joint venture with Rivian to leverage that startup’s decade of EV software development.

So while company brass and investors want the software problem “solved” this quarter, the engineers actually trying to make effective, safe, secure, and reliable solutions are caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s no wonder they’re quitting.

To make matters worse, Elon Musk’s years of insistence that truly self-driving Teslas are arriving “next quarter” have every other automaker scrambling to catch up with his vaporware. GM sank $8 billion into the Cruise robotaxi startup when–weeks after California greenlit the projects–a taxi ran over a pedestrian and dragged her for blocks. Now its cutting its losses and axing the project. I’ve long said automakers should slow down, perfect electrification, then maybe begin to invest in self-driving vehicles.

On to Stellantis’ other executive departures. In May 2024, Mason Stoicevich began as Vice President of U.S. retail sales. Two months later he quit. Richard Schwarzwald had been around a bit longer, becoming Chief Customer Experience Officer in 2021. But he quit about the same time as Stoicevich.

This may be another “rock and a hard place” situation. Regulators have openly admitted they will tighten emissions standards until it’s impossible to build internal combustion cars. Any automaker executives with some foresight are trying to invest in the EV transition now. But even the modern EVs that can outrun range anxiety and only need to charge 20 minutes every three hours during a roadtrip are dismissed as “too inconvenient” by seemingly level-headed reviewers. So it seems impossible to make your boss and your customers happy at the same time.

The final two executives are the big ones: Tim Kuniskis who was the CEO of Dodge and Ram and Jim Morrison who was the leader of Jeep North America.

My colleague Allison Barfield interviewed Morrison during the new Wrangler’s 2022 launch and reported he “seemed young and enthusiastic.” His quitting perplexed her. Kuniskis, for his part, took to the stage enthusiastically to announce Dodge’s new generation of “eMuscle” cars. Then quit before they could debut.

Do these executives have no confidence in the upcoming EV lineup from Dodge, Ram, and Jeep? Not necessarily. As the top dogs, they have to deal with everything those other executives did, and more. Stellantis is insisting all of its 15 brands demonstrate they can remain competitive into the future, and is pushing shared chassis for all new products. Kuniskis and Morrison are tasked with navigating this transition while remaining profitable and keeping their past customer base happy. That might be an impossible task. But that doesn’t mean Stellantis is doomed.

In fact, Stellantis North America is still profitable. The brand family had a 15.4% profit margin in 2023. That slipped a bit from 16.4% in 2022. The North America division is responsible for 45.6% of the Stellantis conglomerate’s profit, which was 86.5 billion Euros in 2023. Ram trucks, Jeep Wranglers, the Chrysler Pacifica, and many other familiar models will remain perennial sellers. Stellantis certainly isn’t going out of business anytime soon.

Here’s the scoop: The Detroit Three have been profitable for essentially every quarter for a century. They developed the automobile, then basically printed money by changing the shape of a bumper here or increasing the displacement of a V8 there. None of them are structured to sustain quarterly losses. But building good EVs will require trillions in research and development. These companies will have to lose money for a while. And they will have to do it while building vehicles that most folks think they don’t want. And the recent executive departures make it clear that Stellantis hasn’t accepted this fact.

What’s interesting about Chrysler Corporation is it’s lagged behind so many times in history and always bounced back. The Ford Mustang invented the pony car market and sold millions of units. GM had the Camaro out 18 months later. It wasn’t until 1970 that Chrysler debuted its E-Body series (with Challenger and Barracuda variants). But the result nailed it. Again, by 1989 Ford and GM had been taking Dodge’s lunch money for years with diesel half ton trucks. Chrysler partnered with Cummins and the rest is history. Chrysler Corporation has a strategy you might call “fast follower,” hiring whoever it takes from the other companies to catch up.

I don’t know if it will be next year, or in five years. But I expect we’ll eventually see a flow of executives into Stellantis North America and then watch the automaker rapidly catch up with its competition.