Geely founder and chairman, Li Shufu

Last week we reported the Geely and Volvo, which is owned by the Chinese car company, will be jointly developing cars and there was speculation if those cars would be sold in America. Now Bloomberg reports that some of those cars will indeed be exported to the United States. That would achieve the goal of Geely chairman Li Shufu that he set when Geely first showed product at the 2006 NAIAS in Detroit. At the same time, Volvo dealers in the U.S. and the company’s American sales unit have been trying to get more Swedish made Volvos shipped here.

Gui Shengyue, current CEO of Geely, said in an interview last week, “Our acquisition of Volvo enhanced our image and overseas consumers are seeing us as an international company. Our deliveries in U.S. and Europe will be banking on those jointly developed models.” Read More >

National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), the Chinese backed company formed to buy the assets of Saab, says that it has hired 300 workers for the factory in Trollhattan, Sweden and that it hopes to start making cars again there by the end of this year. Mikael Oestlund, a spokesman for NEVS, told Automotive News Europe that the Trollhattan plant is “practically ready” to begin production of the 9-3 sedan. That production is dependent on coming to agreements with suppliers. Also, some of Saabs former suppliers failed when the automaker went under and replacements for those parts must be found. “We are not there yet and therefore we are not able to make the decision of start of production,” Oestlund said. Read More >

You may recall that the possibility of building Jeeps in China (something that actually started decades ago when the brand was owned by American Motors) became an issue in last year’s U.S. presidential election campaign. According to reports in Chinese media, the Fiat and Guangzhou Automobile groups have reached a tentative agreement to assemble Jeeps in the companies’ joint venture Changsha factory in central China. Read More >

Sales of passenger vehicles in China were up 11% in July as new assembly plants have opened and as dealers cut prices to clear out inventory before 2014 model year cars start arriving. The state sponsored China Association of Automobile Manufacturers says that wholesale deliveries of automobiles, SUVs and multipurpose vehicles were up to 1.24 million units in July, beating analysts’ expectations. Among the companies that have opened up assembly plants this year in China are Ford, PSA Peugeot Citroen and Chinese owned Volvo. Read More >

China has become an area of tremendous potential for companies as the nominally communist country has embraced capitalism. The hybrid result, according to Ford CEO Alan Mulally, is in some ways an improvement on what’s been a pretty sluggish and inefficient democratic process elsewhere in the world.

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Defying analysts’ predictions that Tesla Motors would report a quarterly loss of $0.17 a share, the EV startup instead announced that it had a second quarter profit, after adjustments, of 20 cents a share, according to non-GAAP principles. On the news, Tesla stock went up 13% in after hours trading.

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Automotive imports to China were down 11% in the first six months of 2013, to 526,000 cars, according to China’s largest import dealer group. That wasn’t the only bad news luxury car importers got.

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Neighborhood EV startup GreenTech Automotive and it’s sister company, Gulf Coast Funds Management, which are the subjects of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into how they solicited foreign investors seeking EB-5 visas, are also at the heart of a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s  investigation of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas. The USCIS-IG is examining Mayrokas’ role in helping those firms secure a job-creating investor’s visa for a Chinese executive. Mayorkas has been nominated by Pres. Obama for the number two position at DHS and would be acting director until the president names Janet Napolitano’s replacement as secretary of Homeland Security. GreenTech/Gulf Coast has been the largest beneficiary of the EB-5 program since 2009, with almost 100 approved and more pending. Read More >

Stefan Jacoby, whose most recent job was CEO of Volvo, has been hired by General Motors to head their international operations. Jacoby replaces Tim Lee who is slated to become chairman of GM China as that unit is split off from the rest of GM International. Lee will continue to head global manufacturing for the Detroit based automaker. The business unit that Jacoby will be running will still have operations in more than 100 markets in Africa, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

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Fuji Heavy Industries, the Subaru’s corporate parent, had a 400% increase in operating profit due to strong U.S. sales for that brand. North American sales for Subaru in its largest market were up 30% to 116,000 unites in the quarter just ended. Fuji’s operating profits were 69.64 billion yen ($739.6 million), up from 17.33 billion yen ($184.05 million) last year, a record for quarterly profits for that company. Read More >

The Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection’s rejection of BMW’s application to expand one of their factories is generating concern that global automaker will find it harder to win approval for their own Chinese projects.

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According the the China Automobile Dealers Association, despite efforts by car makers to reduce inventories, Chinese domestic brand dealers still had 49 days worth of supply in June, a figure that would be considered decent in North America, where two months is the norm. But it’s a matter of concern in China, where normal dealer inventories are 24 to 36 days. That figure is an improvement over the 61 days of supply at the end of May. Read More >

Visionary Vehicles’ envisioned dealership

Malcolm Bricklin’s company, V Cars (formerly Visionary Vehicles), was awarded $2 million by a Detroit jury in U.S. District court. The lawsuit was filed after Bricklin’s failed effort to set up a joint venture with Chery to produce Chinese made cars for the North American market. The jury ruled that KCA Engineering, a company founded by former Visionary executive Dennis Gore while he was still an employee of Bricklin’s startup, had committed fraud as well as a number of other misdeeds. When Gore was first hired by Visionary, Bricklin said it was because of his expertise with Asian car manufacturers.

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Bentley Motors today has confirmed that a fourth model will join the Bentley lineup, this one a SUV, and that it will be built at the British luxury car maker’s Crewe plant starting in 2016 after a £800 million ($1.228 B USD) investment in the facility. The automaker says that over 1,000 new jobs will be created to manufacture the unnamed SUV, which is said to look nothing like the widely criticized EXP 9F concept shown last year. A very basic sketch of the planned vehicle was also released. The company said that Bentley customers have responded “extremely” positively to the idea of a SUV that wears the winged B and claims that the car will be “a thoroughbred Bentley” and have styling that sets “it apart from any other SUV on the road”. Like the company’s Continental models which are related to the Audi A8 and Volkswagen Phaeton, though, the new Bentley SUV will likely share a platform and components with other VAG vehicles.

Bentley press release below. Read More >

In the spirit of our many posts (here, here and here) about the Hongqi Red Flag limousines used by the Communist Party elites in China, and our own Murilee Martin’s interest in limos from the former Soviet Bloc (here), we bring you the winner of a design sponsored by Russia’s Maruissia Motors and the CarDesign.ru website.

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