TTAC’s patent-pending China sales oracle is back to old form again. A few days ago, GM China reported a May sales increase of 21.3 percent. Today, China’s Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) announced its official numbers, and sales are reported to be up 22.6 percent in May. Read More >
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Even after its death, Saab is still good for some excitement. Today, the Wall Street Journal breathlessly reported that an “electric-vehicle consortium buys Saab assets.” When you click on the link in Google, you get your assets handed to you via a rude 404: Page not found. The same is happening with many sites that reported a sale of Saab’s assets to a company called National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), which is as Swedish as chopsticks.
What is behind those missing links? Who is the nice man who goes thumbs up next to China Communist Party Polit Bureau member Li Keqiang? And why has he allegedly just bought Saab? Read More >
China’s car dealers’ “backs are broken,” Luo Lei, deputy secretary general of the China Automobile Dealers Association told Bloomberg. “Dealers can’t shoulder the burden anymore.” They are overstuffed with cars. Average inventory at Chinese dealerships stands at more than two months of sales at the end of May up from a 45 day inventory by the end of April. It could be worse: In America, inventories are way ahead of China.
Dongfeng-Nissan President Kimiyasu Nakamura watches Yao Bin, Huang Kai Fong, and Ye Lei
Yesterday, Nissan’s affable China president Kimiyasu Nakamura brought a Chinese delegation home to Yokohama, to explain to a largely skeptical Japanese press why Nissan had started a new brand in China with joint venture partner Dongfeng. The brand goes by the name of Venucia. Nissan is not the only one doing that. Nearly every foreign joint venture partner in China either has established a Chinese brand in China, or is intensively thinking about it. Read More >
Already pronounced shot by a bursting bubble, the Chinese new car market most likely will be up when the May numbers will be announced later in the month. How do we know? By looking at GM’s China May sales results that were announced today. When we do that, we will do something that TTAC allegedly is incapable of: We will salute and applaud GM. Three times. Read More >
A Ferrari 458, followed by a Lamborghini Aventador were on an outing in Shanghai when a local horse riding club crossed their path. The Ferrari driver demanded the right of way with the tool commonly used in China, the horn.
The horse next to the Ferrari did what many Chinese would like to do: The horse kicked the 458 into the shins, hard. Read More >
The fact (if you can call it that) that China’s government will bring back a Cash-for-clunkers program caused headlines around the world. It also spurred news writers to new peaks of creativity. At the same time, Chinese farmers could protect GM’s honor. Let’s investigate. Read More >
We’re often accused of having an anti-GM bias here at TTAC, but this article will reveal another prejudice, considered ugly by some, but one that I firmly believe in.
Pictures of a burning BYD e6 sent the already beaten down BYD stock on a nose-dive yesterday. The e6 is one of the rare BYD electric cars, used in a taxi test in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. A Nissan GT-R had crashed into two taxis, one a conventional Santana, the other an electric e6. The e6 immediately did burst into flames. Two female passengers and the driver were killed. Read More >
A week after Nissan’s Infiniti finally, officially moved into its new digs in Hong Kong’s Citibank Tower, the company finally, officially confirmed that Infiniti cars will be produced in China starting in 2014. If you think you heard that before, you did. Nissan’s worst kept secret had kept the Chinese rumor mill in motion for more than a year. Read More >
A (hecho en Mexico) Cadillac SRX costs between $67,700 and $91,000 once it’s sold in China. It doubles its price compared to the U.S. because of a monster tariff in China. Soon, there will be a more affordable version. A much, much, much more affordable version. Except that it won’t be from GM. Read More >
Rather than expand production in North America, Subaru is taking a contrarian route and expanding their manufacturing in Japan – even as everyone is scrambling to get out.
A few days ago, we talked about rumors of Chinese production of Lincoln cars, rumors which Ford denies. Chinese media are blasé about the Dearborn denial. New reports are coming out, and Carnewschina says there is more meat to them. The new reports still insist on a start date in 2015 at Ford’s new Hangzhou plant. And they claim to know what cars will be made, including a new Lincoln ‘compact SUV’. Read More >
Optimism sure ain’t what it used to be. Introducing its latest survey of auto industry executives [PDF], Booz & Co. proclaims that “optimism is skyrocketing,” and that “a new wave of optimism is overtaking the U.S. auto industry.” They’re not wrong, but for those used to the pre-bailout days of unabashed optimism dressed up as analysis, the “new optimism” is remarkably guarded. And it’s all relative to the pessimism that was beginning to set in when the industry began to realize that the “old optimism” was wildly at odds with the slow-motion market recovery.
So, just how optimistic is the “new optimism”? Which companies have the most reason for optimism? What do industry executives worry about most? When do they expect a Chinese invasion? The answers to these questions and more after the jump.
The dreaded huge wave of cheap Chinese exports – is still not happening. Instead, China’s Changan exports factories. Read More >
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