Seeing as SAIC is a major stakeholder in Ssangyong (51%) why would anyone get upset about ‘leaking’ hybrid information to them?
CNN reports:
South Korea’s Ssangyong Motor Co. said Sunday it has never leaked hybrid car-related technologies to China’s SAIC Motor Corp.
“As core technologies of hybrid cars are being developed not by Ssangyong but by its partner companies, Ssangyong is not in the position to leak any hybrid technologies to SAIC (Motor),” Ssangyong spokesman Lee Kyo-Hyun told Dow Jones.
He was speaking in response to reports that prosecutors on Friday had raided the head office of its Pyeongtaek plant in an investigation into whether Ssangyong has illegally leaked hybrid technologies to SAIC Motor since 2005.
The spokesman confirmed prosecutors raided the Pyeongtaek office and had taken some documents.
In 2005, SAIC - a longtime partner of General Motors Corp. (GM) and Volkswagen AG (VLKAY) in Shanghai - paid about $500 million for a 51.33% stake in the sport utility vehicle-focused carmaker.
“As SAIC Motor already has technologies to mass produce hybrid cars, it is even considering transferring the technologies to Ssangyong,” said Lee.
Hybrid technology in question was a government/industry joint research project and was export-controlled. Ssangyong was prohibited from transferring this technology outside of Korea because it was paid for by tax money and developed with government R&D centers and other Korean automakers.
SAIC is free to transfer any Ssangyong technology developed and paid for by itself, but not technology developed with government funding and other Korean auto companies.
The negative consequence of this raid is that Ssangyong, and Ssangyong alone, will be barred from participating in any future government-initiated and funded long-term automotive R&D projects, while GM and Renault, along with Hyundai/Kia will continue to benfit from it.
What a lot of nonsense? China already has the hybrid technology and will be mass producing and even exporting to the world very soon. Please refer to the Auto Exhibitions in US & Europe last year. BYD for instance claims their battery in their hybrid models are superior to the others.
The truth is without the China market, South Korean Automobile makers will very soon be on the decline.
Good luck
> China already has the hybrid technology
Not a market-ready one, the one that could be sold in the US with a 10 year warranty. We are talking a “Toyota” grade market-ready hybrid tech here. Sure, a lot of companies are working on hybrid tech. But how many have hybrid tech that’s comparable to Toyota’s?
The reason other automakers had trouble with hybrid tech is not that the tech itself was difficult, but it was difficult to build the hybrid tech cheaply enough to be added to a vehicle for $2,000 extra. A dirty little secret is that hybrid tech is expensive to build and even Toyota loses money on Prius.
The goal of this industry-wide joint research project was to devise a common hybrid framework that would deliver the lowest-cost hybrid component designs and supply chain.