No overcapacity problems at Volkswagen – at least not globally, and especially not in China. “Within the coming years, we will build at least ten more plants – seven of those in China,” Volkswagen chief Martin Winterkorn said today in Wolfsburg, with Automobilwoche taking notes. By 2016, Volkswagen will have capacity for more than four million units in China, that’s about half of VW’s current worldwide output. (Read More…)
Attentive readers of TTAC have known it since the Beijing Auto Show last year that Toyota will launch a separate brand for its “new energy” (read plug-in hybrid and EV) that are produced in China. A not quite officially announced, but de facto policy wants it that way. Now we have the brand. It’s called Ranz. (Read More…)
A fiery red car, seen in Beijing. An aggressive bumper sticker, showing the owner is very angry with Japan. Or, judging from the sticker, maybe it’s hot love? It’s all about those islands, which happen to sit on top of oil, and straight in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. What is this motherland-loving man driving? (Read More…)
Audi showed its A3 Sedan in concept form at the 2011 Geneva Auto Show. The real thing will be shown in Audi’s most important market, at the Shanghai Auto Show, end of April. The car will be sold in early 2014 in the United States and China, Reuters says. (Read More…)
I am coming back to China after having been away for months. My trusted sidekick of many years, a lady surnamed Zhang, seeks my advice. “Bertel, we have car problems.” Uh-oh, I think, and I mentally do a review of my accounts. This smells expensive. As it turns out, the problem is bigger than what money can solve.
Ms. Zhang explains that her mother won the lottery. The Beijing license plate lottery.
(Read More…)
Hyundai and Buick are feeling the heat in China, and the industry might rethink past practices of freewheeling Twitter snark. Hyundai and a Buick dealer made remarks about the quality of their products after a 2-month-old baby was abducted along with the RAV4 it was in. Chinese commenters did not like it at all. (Read More…)
Let’s say you want a Fünfer BMW, but you are experiencing cash flow issues.
Mei wen ti, no problem if you are in China. Creative and innovative Chinese companies are here to help.
Here is how it works:
Today, GM did something highly unusual: It abandoned all spin and said that sales in China were down pretty much across the board in February: “General Motors and its joint ventures sold 215,070 vehicles in China during February. Sales were down 10.6 percent from the same month last year due to the week-long Lunar New Year holiday falling in February this year.” We at TTAC understand. (Read More…)
Audi’s global deliveries were “clearly lower” than in January, Audi’s CEO Rupert Stadler told Reuters reporter Andreas Cremer in Geneva. Audi’s global sales were up 16.3 percent in January. There won’t be a minus said Stadler, even while fighting the lunar calendar, Audi will report a single digit plus.
Audi’s numbers won’t be the only ones that won’t look as good as the month before.
As expected, sales of Japanese cars in China took a nosedive to levels not seen since the days after Japanese cars and dealerships were torched last September. Sales of Nissan and Toyota are down a whopping 46 percent. No, it’s not a new flare-up of anti-Japanese riots. This time, it’s the effect of the Chinese Lunar calendar. (Read More…)
American automakers keep complaining about the allegedly closed Japanese market where just about nobody wants their big brutes since … the last world war. The Japanese market is full, it has too much local capacity, and it is getting smaller by the day. At the same time, Detroit does not seem to have its ear on the ground in a much bigger market close-by: China. Despite being in China in full strength, Detroit hasn’t capitalized on a huge trend in the Middle Kingdom: Pickups for urban cowboys. According to Chinacartimes, money is left on the table for Chinese who are ready to cash in. (Read More…)
Max Warburton and his team. Warburton, of Bernstein Research, assembled a team to interview over 40 auto executives in China (both Chinese and foreign-born) and even bought two Chinese vehicles from Geely and Great Wall. Warburton had them shipped to Europe, where they were taken to a test track, driven extensively and then taken apart by engineers and automotive consultants. And it was far from pretty.
The thousand injuries of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission have been borne as the operators and taxi passengers best could, but when someone ventures to insult the august governmental body, there is always some lackey ready to claim that the TLC protects — protects! — New Yorkers against a variety of imaginary offenses from racism to murder. Anything’s possible. The TLC clearly protects New Yorkers from the Cloverfield monster, because it’s never actually been spotted in the city.
On the other hand, when it comes to protecting New Yorkers from counterfeit, defective taxi parts, the FBI has to get involved.
Li Shufu, Chairman Geely
Two months ago, we wrote that Geely will pour $11 billion into a development program for the next generation Volvos, and that half of that money would go to Sweden. Our commentariat did not quite buy that and said that the technology will go to China. Right they were. (Read More…)
The Chinese-Israeli co-production Qoros has not sold a single car yet, but it already finds itself in the legal hot seat. Via a temporary injunction of a court in Hamburg, Germany, Audi precluded Qoros from using – the letter Q.
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