GM has a $530m millstone around its neck. It’s the closed and unsold Antwerp plant. Nobody wants it. The Antwerp assets are turning into a liability which endangers the GM IPO. Now it looks like GM found a savior that could take the plant off their hands. Guess where he comes from. Hint: Not from Washington. (Read More…)

Popular wisdom was that foreign companies have to tread carefully in China, lest they’ll be robbed blind of their vaunted intellectual property and thrown by the wayside. Now it has come to the total opposite: GM has made a mess out of India. And they turn to their old Chinese buddies at SAIC to help them out. Not just financially. Technologically. “GM hopes to take advantage of Shanghai Automotive Industry’s expertise in making small, low-cost cars to raise its share” in India, reports The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)

Porsche just announced something highly unusual: Record full-year revenues from selling Porsches. No more option plays with attached sheet metal bending operation. Revenues rose 17.9 percent to a record €7.79b ($10.5b), and Porsche said it expects to see the positive trend continue in the current business year, reports Reuters.

And where do all these sales come from? Definitely not from Porsche’s core markets, the U.S.A. and Germany. (Read More…)

According to popular wisdom, you can invest all you want into China, but you can’t take your money out. Not so, says Gasgoo. As a matter of fact, would it not be for China, the bottom line of many a car company would look ugly.

Volkswagen for instance gained nearly half of its pretax profit from the Chinese market in the first quarter of this year. (Read More…)

Volvo, now in the hands of China’s Geely, may revolutionize the way electric and hybrid cars are built. Currently, you have to shove a big honking battery into an electric car, and a simple honking battery into a hybrid. This adds weight, and obesity is a killer when in come to mileage.  Volvo, working with the Imperial College in London has a wild idea: Why not dispense with the big honking battery and use the whole auto body to store electricity. Say what? (Read More…)

Where would the German car industry be without China? You guessed it: In deep Scheisse. China’s insatiable demand for German cars helped the German auto industry survive the crisis stronger than ever. Germany’s new car exports to China in the first six months of this year reached €4.4b ($6b). That’s 6.1 percent of its total car exports, says the China Business Times via Gasgoo. (Read More…)

According to lore, China has closed off its market to foreign car importers, and is ready to flood the world with cheapmobiles.

Just the opposite is true. (Read More…)

China’s Chery is one of the few big car companies that is not wedded to a foreigner. All the big ones are in bed with one or more Western (or Eastern) manufacturer.  Finally,  it looks like Chery might be losing its virginity. (Read More…)

A few weeks ago, a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese coast guard vessel ( or vice versa, depending on who’s telling  the story.) The crew was sent home, the captain was arrested. This happened near some uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea, called Diaoyu islands in China and Senkaku islands in Japan. The rocks are under Japanese administration, but are also claimed by (to make matters even more complicated) China AND Taiwan. The islands sit on top of a huge natural gas field, to make matters really interesting. To get the captain home and to make a point, China has been ratcheting up the rhetoric. China is looking for a pressure point that hurts the Japanese. First, they tried to cut off the stream of Chinese tourists that go shopping in Japan. That didn’t work.

Now, China may have found something that seriously messes with traffic in Japan. (Read More…)

Carlos Ghosn has the Wall Street Journal flabbergasted. To the utter dismay of the WSJ, Ghosn said that Nissan is talking to their joint venture partner Dongfeng about transferring lithium-ion battery know-how and other electric-car technology to the joint venture. Even more worrisome to the WSJ is Ghosn’s statement that “there’s no limit to technology we bring to China.”

According to the WSJ, “Ghosn’s remarks on electric vehicles, at a news conference Monday, come amid worries by many foreign auto executives about a ten-year plan China is drafting for the electric-vehicle industry that they fear could compel foreign companies to transfer technology to local joint ventures in a way that might result in their losing control of the technology.”

These worries are either worries by junior executives, or the imagination of even greener Wall Street Journal reporters. (Read More…)

China’s FAW, despite its name (First Automobile Works) only second largest manufacturer in China, joint venture partner of Volkswagen and Toyota, and owner of a large array of brands, including the Hongqi, has filed its contribution to the 12th Five-Year Plan (pretty much the only holdover from the olden days) with China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). The numbers, brought to us by CapitalVue, are both audacious and timorous. (Read More…)

Again, shameless China shows utter disregard for intellectual property. Nothing is sacred anymore. The American government fines Toyota? Great! Let’s copy that! The Nikkei [sub] reports that Toyota has been fined by local authorities in Zhejiang Province. Wait until you hear what for. (Read More…)

As with most EVs, we knew about the CODA EV for a long time before a price was ever trotted out (the car was first mooted as the Miles XS500, and was scheduled for a 2009 launch before reality struck). And even before we knew the price, we reckoned that a Chinese-built sedan with Chinese battery cells thrown into it in Southern California would face its fair share of challenges. Now that the CODA EV has been priced at $44,900 (full specs here), we’re certain of it. Of course, Federal tax breaks bring the CODA down to $37,400, and a further California incentive could bring it as low as $32,400, or about $400 less than a Nissan Leaf… before tax breaks. Why would anyone pay $12,000 more for a Chinese fly-by-night when they could have a Nissan? CODA CEO Kevin Czinger tells Automotive News [sub] that

Price is not a decisive factor in the sale of electric cars. I think the 40 percent additional range, and 40 percent additional battery energy with all-season thermal management, is the decisive factor

In order to produce and sell cars in China, foreign firms are required to form joint partnerships with a Chinese firm. With a ten-year, $15b government EV stimulus in the works, automakers are complaining that a requirement to build EVs in partnership with Chinese firms amounts to government-mandated barrier to market access. A foreign automaker executive complains to the Wall Street Journal that the draft version of the government plan is

tantamount to China strong-arming foreign auto makers to give up battery, electric-motor, and control technology in exchange for market access… We don’t like it.

China’s automotive market is projected to grow faster than most, and with $15b of government assistance, the Chinese government has a big carrot with which to tempt foreign firms into sharing their technology. But the backlash is already building…

(Read More…)

Are you a top talent in the international auto market? Looking for a job? Why not give Brilliance a call? They are looking for 70 top talents globally, Gasgoo reports. Ever since Brilliance’s former General Manager Liu Zhigang and several other executives deserted to Huaitai Auto, there have been major openings at Brilliance. Qi Yumin, President of Brilliance Auto said that these positions will be filled. (Read More…)