China’s Dongfeng makes a lot of cars with several joint ventures. It also makes its own cars. In a way. It’s ode to the Hummer is legend. Now, Dongfeng found inspiration in another legend: The Unimog. At a show in Shanghai, Carnewschina found the Dongfeng v-Tiger, or EQ2070FQJ, which it says is a spitting image of Daimler’s inconic Unimog workhorse. Well, that’s up to debate. One thing isn’t: (Read More…)
The Nikkei [sub] says that Nissan will move the (or a) headquarters of its Infiniti brand to Hong Kong, and that Nissan “will begin manufacturing Infiniti-brand vehicles in China as early as next year, becoming the first Japanese automaker to produce luxury cars in that nation.”
Not so fast, say close-to-the-matter contacts in Yokohama. (Read More…)
I’m sure you know the stage trick where a woman is sawed in half and lives. Now, try the same with a Volvo and a truck loaded with masses of steel bars. Volvo S40 crashes into truck. Bundles of steel bars crash through the windshield, exit on the other side of the car. What happens to the driver and front seat passenger? (Read More…)
Today, Saab creditors met in a packed-beyond capacity courtroom on Vänersborg. After a short deliberation, the district court approved the reorganization plan, Göteborg’s Posten reports. It will cost 500 jobs in Trollhättan. On Friday, China’s Youngman and Pangda had agreed to take over Saab 100 percent – in a Memorandum of Understanding, which isn’t worth much, and which is littered with caveats.
The reorganization plan, (full text here), was feted in a lengthy press release. It starts like this: (Read More…)
There may be a deal in the works to return GM’s golden share in the increasingly important joint venture with China’s SAIC. It will be a skewed trade: The joint venture will go back to 50-50. In return, a sales company will be set up, which is majority controlled by SAIC in a 51-49 joint venture. SAIC will be controlling the most important aspect of the car business: The selling of cars.
In 2009, GM sold one percent of the 50-50 partnership.to SAIC for a token sum of $85 million. Officially, this was to allow SAIC to reflect the JV’s earnings on its books. New Chinese accounting rules say that the earnings can only be reflected if there is substantial control of the company. People had scratched their heads back then – if this share is so important, then why was the price so low? In a 10-K filing, GM explained later: (Read More…)
On the last possible day to work out a deal before being forced into bankruptcy, the Victor Muller era has ended at Saab. The Swedish brand will now become a completely Chinese-owned company… if all goes to plan. A press release explains
Swedish Automobile N.V. (Swan) announces that it entered into a memorandum of understanding with Pang Da and Youngman for the sale and purchase of 100% of the shares of Saab Automobile AB (Saab Automobile) and Saab Great Britain Ltd. (Saab GB) for a consideration of EUR 100 million…
…The administrator in Saab Automobile’s voluntary reorganisation, Mr. Guy Lofalk, has withdrawn his application to exit reorganisation. The MOU is valid until November 15 of this year, provided Saab Automobile stays in reorganisation.
But remember, this is Saab… and its fate rests in the hands of many, many people not named Victor Muller. Despite the air of finality that is surrounding some of the media coverage of this latest announcement, this is not a done deal. The Saab saga rolls on…
If you’ve followed TTAC for the last several, you’ve been able to watch the meteoric rise of Build Your Dreams from humble upstart to Buffett-backed behemoth. Two years ago, BYD seemed poised to launch an unstoppable onslaught of cheap Chinese electric cars that seemed like an attractive proposition at a time when gas price angst was everywhere. Today, however, things have changed considerably. Bloomberg reports that BYD has opened its US headquarters in Los Angeles, a year behind schedule, and with fewer jobs than initially promised. And no wonder: for all intents and purposes, BYD has practically abandoned its charge to leverage its cell phone battery know-how into electric car dominance. According to Bloomberg, BYD
“has delayed plans to sell electric cars to retail buyers, citing limited availability of public chargers. Instead, it’s focusing on solar panels, batteries, LED lighting and rechargeable buses.” (Read More…)
With a Halloween deadline to get its restructuring back on track looming, Swedish Automobile has rejected an offer by Youngman and Pang Da to buy 100% of Saab’s shares. Moreover, the struggling Swedish brand has canceled the existing agreement with Youngman and Pang Da, its erstwhile would-be rescuers. A Saab presser notes:
Today, Swedish Automobile N.V. (Swan) announced that it has given notice of termination with immediate effect of the Subscription Agreement of July, 2011 entered into by Swan, Pang Da and Youngman.
Swan took this step in view of the fact that Pang Da and Youngman failed to confirm their commitment to the Subscription Agreement and the transactions on the agreed terms contemplated thereby as well as to explicit and binding agreements made on October 13, 2011 related to providing bridge funding to Saab Automobile AB (Saab Automobile) while in reorganization under Swedish law.
Pang Da and Youngman have presented Swan on October 19 and 22 with certain conditional offers for an alternative transaction for the purchase of 100 percent of the shares in Saab Automobile which are unacceptable to Swan. However, discussions between the parties are ongoing
One of the earliest iterations of the “Low Speed Vehicle Today, World EV Domination Tomorrow” business model to emerge at the dawn of the electric car era was ZAP. But after being exposed on numerous occasions for its poor product quality, vaporware hype and stock manipulation (most infamously in this Wired story), ZAP disappeared from the EV scene in the US (the company’s official (read: sanitized) history can be found here). Last we heard, ZAP was hyping a venture with the Korean optics firm Samyang, but it seems the firm has spending the last year or so putting down roots in the Chinese market. Having merged with Jonway, the Chinese maker of scooters, ATVs and a CUV that looks suspiciously like the Toyota RAV4, ZAP came back to the US for the Automotive X-Prize, which it contested in a ZAP Alias, the three-wheeled, $38k vehicle that has not been produced in volume although the company is still accepting deposits for it. The Alias failed to finish in the X-Prize, but ZAP says that revenue from Jonway is funding the vehicle’s continued development (including a four-wheeled version)… which was supposed to debut way back in 2009.
Now Consumer Reports says the firm is focusing on selling electric RAV4 knockoffs produced by Jonway as it continues to work on the Alias. But the firm seems to have burnt too many bridges in the US, as it says it will focus on selling the EVs in China and other world markets… despite the fact that developing market EV sales are going nowhere. But ZAP has left something of a legacy in the US: Senator Mitch McConnell, a critic of government loans for Solyndra, apparently pushed for a quarter-billion dollar federal loan to ZAP, opening him to charges of hypocrisy. Now, as ever, ZAP remains a fascinating fixture at the margins of the EV scene. And though it’s an interesting company to watch, it’s best when viewed from a safe distance…
Guy Lofalk, the administrator of Saab’s reorganization, will ask the court in Vänersborg to terminate the reorganization process. Before, Saab expressed “doubts that the bridge funding of Youngman and Pang Da, of which a partial payment has been received, shall be paid in full on 22 October 2011.” Finally something we can agree on.
What happens if the court accepts Lofalk’s recommendation? Stockholm News explains it:
With both China’s NRDC and Sweden’s NDO appearing unready to approve the Chinese takeover of Saab before a Halloween bankruptcy deadline, it seemed that Saab was properly borked. Without Vladimir Antonov or Gemini Investment Fund to hit up for yet another “bridge loan,” we fully expected to see Saab placed into bankruptcy a week from Monday. But if Saab’s parent company, Swedish Automobile, had found a private equity fund that was gullible enough to rush in where Antonov feared to tread and drop $44m on Spyker… well, we should have known that North Street Capital would be fool enough to get sucked into the Saab maelstrom. And sure enough, Reuters reports that
The private equity firm of racing car enthusiast Alex Mascioli, which bought the luxury sports car business of the Dutch owner of Saab in September, is to invest $70 million in the cash-strapped car maker as Chinese bridge financing looks uncertain.
Here we go… again.
(Read More…)
The exodus of Japanese automakers continues – this time, in the opposite direction. If the sources of The Nikkei [sub] are right, then Mazda will stop making the Mazda6 in the U.S. and move production to Japan and China. (Read More…)
Chinese automakers are delaying exports to Europe and the US until after 2015, largely because they admit their products aren’t “ready for primetime.” And few issues demonstrate that fact as well as the scandalous crash test videos that have defined internet perceptions of Chinese cars for years now. But with even more recent Chinese export-intenders continuing to put up lousy safety results, Autobild reports that, starting in 2012, China will improve its crash test standards to near-European levels.
(Read More…)
When you’re fighting a lost cause, no news can be good news. Which is why a media-distracting scandal involving Swedish Social Democrat Party leader Hakan Juholt has been one of the best things to happen to Saab since… the late 1980s or so. But here at TTAC, we’re always ready to remind our Swedish friends of the futility of human endeavor… a trait they apparently appreciate (see above). And what little news there is coming out of Sweden is bad.
(Read More…)
The Chinese car market may be a bit tepid these days. It’s slow, because fewer small commercial vehicles are being sold, and because sales of small passenger cars, especially homegrown ones, are not growing as much as they used to. One segment appears to be utterly oblivious to the slowdown in China: Premium cars. Bitter rivals BMW and Audi are selling more cars in China than ever. (Read More…)
Recent Comments