Short news automotive
February 7, 2013 Category Automotive Metals & Minerals, Short news automotive
- Global automakers consider China as their top choice for investment because of its huge domestic demand and export opportunities, a KPMG survey showed. China was favored by 70% of respondents as the top investment destination over other BRIC countries, according to the auditing firm’s 14th annual global auto executive survey among 200 respondents in 31 countries and regions. The survey also showed that 94% believed that China’s domestic car sales will continue to grow, driven by the rising middle class and growing urbanization. Four Chinese automakers may rank among the top 10 companies in global market share over the next five years, and the BRIC markets may account for nearly half of worldwide vehicle sales by 2018.
- China now has nearly 30,000 new energy vehicles on the road and will promote the use of hybrid buses in the future, Zhao Yuhai, Director of the High-tech Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said. 23,000 new energy vehicles are now used for public transport in 25 pilot cities, with the rest privately owned.
- Toyota, Honda and Nissan all reported annual sales declines in China last year following protests and a boycott over the Diaoyu Islands dispute. Sales at Toyota and Nissan decreased more than 5% to 850,000 units and 1.18 million units respectively, while Honda dropped 3.1% from the previous year to fewer than 600,000 units.
- Shenyang-based Brilliance Automotive, the Chinese partner of BMW Group, sold more than 670,000 vehicles in 2012, an increase of 18% from last year, to become the seventh-largest domestic automaker by sales, one place higher than its position in 2011. It aims to sell 750,000 vehicles in 2013, among them 69,000 exports.
- Great Wall Motors, which mainly makes MPVs, SUVs and light trucks, said its 2012 sales grew 28% last year to 625,000 units, surpassing its original target of 600,000 units. In December alone, it sold 68,000 vehicles, a surge of 29% over the same period last year. Of the total, the automaker, headquartered in Baoding, Hebei province, sold 96,000 vehicles overseas, an annual increase of 16.1%. The company has set a sales target of 700,000 vehicles for 2013.
- Ford China delivered 626,616 vehicles last year, an increase of 21% over 2011. Its joint venture with Chang’an sold 418,500 units, an increase of 31%, while its commercial vehicle joint venture Jiangling Motor sold 19,941 units, a rise of 14%.
- After eight years in the making, China’s car warranty regulation will finally take effect on October 1, giving official backing to customers’ rights to return faulty vehicles and ask for a replacement or a refund in the first two years or 50,000 kilometers if serious faults could not be repaired. Additionally, consumers can enjoy free repairs in the first three years or 60,000 kilometers if their cars have quality problems. The China Consumers’ Association received 16,805 complaints from car users in 2011. According to the China Association for Quality, 4,664 complaints were filed by car users in the first half of 2012, of which 30% were about engine problems.
- Rolls-Royce Motor Cars made around 30% of its total sales last year in the Chinese mainland, its second-largest market in 2012, slightly behind the U.S. Rolls-Royce currently has 15 dealers in China. During 2012, its two dealerships in Beijing and Shanghai were listed among the top three worldwide in terms of sales, for the second year running. In 2012, another British luxury brand – Bentley – saw its sales in China increase by 23% from a year earlier to 2,253 units, accounting for a quarter of its total global sales. Bentley plans to expand its distribution network to 40 dealerships, covering all major provinces in China.
- General Motors will add 400 dealers in China this year to 4,200 locations as it looks to keep growing faster than China’s overall automotive industry which is expected to grow by 8% this year, Bob Socia, GM China President, told reporters at the Detroit auto show. The brands sold by GM and its joint ventures in China include Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Opel, Baojun and Wuling. Sales of passenger cars and commercial vehicles in China should grow 5% to 8% this year, hitting 21 million vehicles, Socia said.
- Shanghai car plate prices surpassed the CNY70,000 benchmark for the first time in the January auction. In the seventh consecutive month of hitting a record high, the lowest winning bid for a Shanghai car plate shot up to CNY75,000. The average price surged CNY5,986 on December’s figure to CNY75,332, the Shanghai Commodity International Auction Co said. The steep price increase came after the city reduced the supply of car plates by 300 from last month to 9,000 – the lowest in nine months – while the number of bidders increased from 18,244 to 20,857. This saw the percentage of motorists with successful bids fall from 51% in December to 43%.
- Tsubakimoto Chain, an Osaka-based car-parts supplier, is considering expanding in China to meet a surge in orders from Volkswagen and General Motors as a territorial dispute damps demand for Japanese cars. Tsubakimoto is studying building factories near Shanghai or Tianjin to meet an expected capacity shortfall.
- Daimler, the world’s third biggest maker of luxury vehicles, will sell a limited edition of its Smart city car through Sina Weibo, China’s largest microblog service, as it reaches out to China’s internet users. Weibo says it has more than 368 million registered users. Buyers have to put down a CNY1,999 deposit for the CNY128,888 car.
- Daimler said it will pay €640 million for 12% of BAIC Motor, a unit of Beijing Automotive Industries Corp, with which it makes Mercedes-Benz cars in China. Daimler said the investment was to prepare for a possible initial public offering (IPO) by BAIC Motor.
- Spanish lender Banco Santander has received Chinese regulatory approval to form a 50-50 joint venture with China’s seventh-largest automaker, Jianghuai Automobile. Fortune Auto Finance will have a registered capital of CNY500 million, making Santander one of the fist foreign banks to get a car finance license in China. The venture will provide auto financing services to cars made by JAC and other brands, the bank said.
- Only one new-energy car plate was issued on the first day they were made available free-of-charge in Shanghai. The plates are similar to normal car plates but start with the letters “DZ.” The issue of new-energy car plates comes at a time when the average auction price for a conventional car plate has soared above CNY75,000. The Shanghai government will pay a subsidy of CNY40,000 for electric vehicles and CNY30,000 for plug-in hybrids, in addition to a maximum CNY60,000 offered by the central government. The owner of the Roewe E50 saved about CNY170,000 and paid just about CNY130,000 for a car that is priced at CNY234,900 without the taxes.
- A recent report from China Galaxy Securities shows that Chinese carmakers on average used only 58% of their production capacity last year, while Sino-foreign joint ventures operated at 90%. The report estimates that only four domestic carmakers will use more than 60% of their production capacity this year.
- Chongqing’s Chang’an Automobile Group has recently built a testing facility for vehicle resistance to cold in Heihe, Heilongjiang province. This year Chang’an plans to export 15,000 vehicles to Russia, where the government has stringent requirements for vehicles to operate in extreme cold. Chang’an plans to build a similar test center this year in Mohe, China’s northernmost and coldest city.
- China is likely to become Bentley’s largest market in 2013. The carmaker delivered a record of 2,253 units in the country last year, surging 23% from 2011, next only to its delivery of 2,457 units in the U.S. Bentley, now a unit of Volkswagen, sold 8,510 cars across the globe in 2012, an increase of 22%. China is currently Bentley’s second-largest market.
- Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co (JAC) is set to produce 100,000 electric vehicles by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan (2011-15) period, as it aims to become the top domestic brand in the new-energy car sector, said Yan Gang, Deputy General Manager at the 2012 Global New Energy Vehicle Conference in Hainan province. The company has sold more than 5,000 electric vehicles since 2010.
- Michelin launched its biggest investment project in China, a USD1.5 billion tire plant in Shenyang, Liaoning province, capable of making 12 million tires for cars and trucks annually. The new plant will be Michelin’s biggest worldwide and replace its old facility in Shenyang, which began production in 1996. “We expect our business to speed up by two to three times over the coming years, as the Chinese tire industry will maintain booming momentum, boosted by rapid growth of auto sales in recent years,” said Philippe Verneuil, President of Michelin China.
- Sales at Toyota Motor and its Chinese joint ventures rose 23.5% in January compared with a year earlier, the first rise since the outbreak of anti-Japan protests last year that led to a sharp drop in sales among Japanese carmakers. But analysts remarked that the Spring Festival fell in January last year, and in February this year, and comparisons should be made on first-quarter data rather than monthly figures. Toyota said it and its Chinese partners sold 72,500 cars in the country in January. Toyota’s China sales fell 15.9% in December. Last month’s rise was the first year-on-year growth since June last year.
- Toyota Motor is recalling 22,869 Lexus cars in China because of defects with windshield wipers, the biggest callback since a new law broadening manufacturer liability came into force this year. The company is recalling the imported Lexus IS cars, which were made from January 2006 to September 2011. Last year, a total of 113 cases of vehicle recalls were administered in China, with 3.2 million defective vehicles being recalled, a 75% increase from a year earlier.
- Shanghai Maple Guorun, a subsidiary of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group’s Hong Kong-listed arm, said that it has signed an agreement with Kandi Vehicles to set up a 50-50 joint venture for electric vehicles. With registered capital of CNY1 billion, the joint venture will engage in the investment, research and development, production, marketing and sales of electric vehicles on the Chinese mainland. The venture will not become a subsidiary of Geely or Kandi, and its financial results will not be consolidated into the financial statements of either groups or their respective subsidiaries.
- General Motors and its joint ventures sold more than 300,000 vehicles in a single month for the first time ever in January. Sales totaled 310,765 units, an increase of 26% from the same month in 2012 and 15.9% above the previous all-time monthly high of 268,035 units in January 2011. Domestic sales by its Chinese ventures Shanghai GM and SAIC-GM-Wuling, and their Buick, Chevrolet and Wuling brands all set single-month records in January.
- A Chinese electric vehicle consortium led by the Beijing Institute of Technology has signed agreements with the Warsaw University of Technology and Tauron Polska Energia to help develop an electric bus network in Poland. Six electric buses on a platform developed by Beijing Institute of Technology, will be made for the two-year trial project in Poland. The Chinese group consists of BIT and its subsidiary BIT Huachuang Electric Vehicle Technology Co, along with CITIC Guoan Mengguli Power Science and Technology Co, and Shanghai Dianba New Energy Technology Co. Six charging and swapping stations will later be set up in five Polish cities, with 780 purely electric buses in operation.
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