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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Suzuki and VW don’t seem ready to officially call it quits just yet. The two companies are still talking, with both sides continuing to see positives in what was to be a partnership on small cars and Suzuki’s domination of emerging markets.
Senior management from both sides, including Osamu Suzuki, are currently in talks to revive the partnership as it could help Suzuki spread their R&D costs over multiple products and give them access to VW technology. Volkswagen wants a greater foothold in India and China, where Suzuki has been wildly successful, a stark contrast to their presence in North America. If talks fail, the courts have some decisions to make.
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…)
Both General Motors and the Volkswagen group can claim bragging rights after Chinese sales results for June have been announced. VW outsold GM for the month, 262, 700 units to 236,207, but GM was still ahead for the first six months of 2013 with 1.57 million units sold compared to 1.54 million for VW.
A report in Automotive News Europe (courtesy of Bloomberg) highlights just how much growth potential there is for BMW in China. Karsten Engel, BMW’s top man in China told the outlet
“Strong growth in future will come from the smaller cities, and the strong growth will also come especially from the western region…There are 100 cities with more than a million inhabitants in China with no premium car dealers at all, so this shows the huge potential we’re having in this country,” he said in an interview in Beijing.
Put another way: in 1994, BMW sold 800 cars annually in China. Now, they sell about 900 per day.
Renault hopes to get going on its foray into China, and to sign a joint venture agreement with Dongfeng, Reuters says. “We are waiting for an official invitation from the Chinese industry ministry,” Reuters heard from an insider. Rumors of an impending JV kept Chinese media guessing and speculating for years. (Read More…)
GM’s ailing Opel hopes to enter the American and Chinese markets, and through that for a speedier recuperation. It wants to do that under cover: Made in Europe Opels, sold abroad as Buicks. This according to a report in Opel’s hometown paper Mainzer Allgemeine Zeitung. (Read More…)
Japanese carmakers are not out of the woods yet in China, and might be in the thick of things again if matters flare up. The other day, 30 right wing Japanese activists had to be kept away by Japanese Coast Guard, while the US and Japan held war games in preparations for a possible Chinese invasion of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. (Read More…)
For many years, U.S. automakers warned against the red menace of millions of cheap Chinese cars flooding a helpless American market. It never happened. What finally got the Chinese export machine going a little bit was GM, which started shipping Made-in-China Chevrolet Sails. The Sails convinced buyers around the world that those Chinese cars aren’t as bad as thought, and now China exports around 5 percent of its production. GM expects to export between 100,000 to 130,000 vehicles from China this year, and wants to more than double the number by 2015.
Ford chief Alan Mulally today joined the ranks of people calling for increased Chinese car exports. He’s ready to export Fords from China. (Read More…)
China’s car restrictions are spreading to the provinces. I always thought Beijing is one of China’s most polluted cities, but no, says the Wall Street Journal, Shijiazhuang is. And it is putting a stop to willy-nilly car buying. (Read More…)
When GM announced last week that it wants to increase Cadillac’s share of the global luxury market from 8.5 percent now to 9 percent by 2016, we opined that from “looking at the plan, GM appears to be betting big on the success of its new Chinese assembly plant.” It turns out that Cadillac is betting big on China. Cadillac “aims to quadruple its share of China’s luxury auto market to 10 percent by 2020,” Reuters reports today.
By 2020, GM is “targeting about 250,000 luxury car sales in China,” says Reuters. It will be rough.
Fisker is at its last gasp. After burning through $1.4 billion, “the company is out of cash,” writes Reuters, “for months, key investors have been footing the car maker’s day-to-day expenses to keep it alive in diminished form.” Reuters has an in-depth report on what went wrong at Fisker. Reuters also has the one sentence version:
(Read More…)
Everybody was betting big on electric cars in China. Everybody thought China will be the world’s biggest market for EVs. It was a bluff. At the Shanghai Auto Show in April, the smart money suddenly was on hybrids. Insiders expect that the Chinese government will extend bigger subsidies to buyers of hybrid cars, after the big electric car revolution in China turned out to be a bust. This is good for Japanese carmakers – for some at least. (Read More…)
GM appears to be less convinced of the second coming of Cadillac than many of its fans. In the Global Business Conference Call, Bob Ferguson, VP of Global Cadillac, did set very cautious goals for Cadillac. (Read More…)
In a bout of severe wishful thinking, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche told Reuters that “Daimler does not expect the current spat between the European Union and China will escalate to include cars,”
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