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Geely Unveils Models to be Introduced at Beijing Auto Show

Published by Charlie April 18th, 2008 in Geely Automobile and Chinese Car News. 7 Comments

Geely Vice President Frank Zhao gave an exciting opening speech at the Automotive News China Conference in Beijing Thursday evening providing a wealth of inside information about Geely’s strategies to continue their stellar growth. According to Mr. Zhao Geely intends to “bring Chinese culture into auto Culture” which appears to translate into a desire to do things China BIG.

Mr. Zhao revealed Geely’s plans to triple engineering staff by the end of 2010 and build a new twenty story R&D center in Hangzhou where they will design award winning Geely products. With this giant engineering powerhouse Geely plans to design five core technology platforms from which they will build 15 production platforms and new 42 models by the end of 2015.

Mr. Zhao also unveiled the new models Geely will exhibit at the Beijing Auto Show next week:

Panda Subcompact
Panda Electrical Car
King Kong HRV
China Dragon
Vision Wagon
FC-2 Hatchback
FC-3 Sedan
GC-1 Luxury Sedan
NL-1 SUV
HL-1 MPV
HL-2 MPV with suicide doors
CE Subcompact
Geely GF Formula Race Car
Geely GT

See artist concept drawings below:

Geely GT Geely Powertrain and Steering Technology Geely GF Formula Race Car

Geely CE Subcompact Geely HL-1 MPV and HL-2 MPV with suicide doors Geely NL-1 SUV

Geely GC-1 Luxury Sedan Geely FC-2 Hatchback and FC-3 Sedan Geely Vision Wagon

Geely China Dragon Geely King Kong HRV Geely Panda Subcompact and Panda Electrical Car

Beijing Hyundai to Build Two Elantras

Published by Charlie April 18th, 2008 in Chinese Car News. 1 Comment

At the end of last year we talked about the new Hyundai Elantra designed specifically for the China market to be launched in 2008. This new model has been seeing more and more press recently and should be one of the major attractions at the Hyundai booth next week at the Beijing Auto Show.

Today J. M. Noh, President of Beijing Hyundai Motor Company confirmed that Hyundai intends to follow in the footprints of Volkswagen and produce two different Elantras for the China market. According to Mr. Noh this is something that Hyundai would never do in Korea or the USA, but China is a very special market.

In China the Elantra is largely seen as a cheap vehicle widely used by taxis in Beijing. Hyundai will continue to build the old Elantra for taxi fleets while targeting sales of the new improved Elantra to the consumer market.

Volkswagen did the same thing in China with their Jetta, continuing to build the 24 year old designed Mark 2 to this present day while rebranding the Jetta Mark 4 as the Bora in China. This strategy worked well until 2003 when competition from new entrants like GM caused VW’s market share to shrink dramatically. We will have to watch and see how this strategy works for Hyundai.

Mosolf Plans to Enter China in a Big Way

Published by Charlie April 18th, 2008 in Beijing-Benz DaimlerChrysler Automotive. 0 Comments

GEFCO’s Peter Reinshagen and Dr Jörg Mosolf, CEO of Horst Mosolf held an interesting and informative question and answer session at the 5th Automotive Logistics China Conference in Beijing Thursday afternoon. Together they outlined strategies they believe will help develop world-class practices for China-specific vehicle logistics.

Dr. Mosolf explained the factors that he believes differentiate automobile logistics from simple vehicle transportation: Customer Focus, IT Forecasting, Quality Management, Intermodel and Optimization. Mosolf strives to work closely with automobile manufactures to change manufacturing from a “Push” strategy where cars are produced and then pushed out to the customer to a “Pull” strategy where production tracks end customer purchases and manufacturing builds vehicles which are already sold.

Mr. Reinshagen and Dr. Mosolf shared examples of instances where their companies work together despite being competitors. They explained how they share transportation resources to optimize efficiency and reduce empty shipments in order to save energy and protect the environment.

Both companies expressed a willingness to share technology with potential Chinese partners to help improve logistics provided to Chinese automobile manufacturers. Dr. Mosolf’s emphasized “What I am sure of is that we will do business in China.”

Dr. Mosolf believes foreign invested joint venture manufacturers will be the first companies to export automobiles in large quantities. Given Mosolf’s close relationship with Daimler Benz is it possible Mercedes is planning to begin exporting cars made in China? We’ll have to wait and see.

China’s Automobile Joint Venture Requirement May End in 2010

Published by Charlie April 18th, 2008 in Beijing Car Show and Chinese Car News. 1 Comment

Mr. Zhang Xiaoyu gave an interesting and inspiring speech during the opening ceremony of the Automotive Manufacturing in China conference in Beijing Wednesday evening. Mr. Zhang who is presently the Deputy Director of the China Confederation of Machinery Industry has held many high level positions in the Chinese government relating to the automobile industry during his career.

While not presently a government employee, Mr. Zhang is certainly someone who is “in the know” which is why it came as a surprise when Mr. Zhang revealed 2010 as the year when China will likely change the present regulations requiring foreign automobile manufacturers to form joint ventures with Chinese partners in order to manufacture cars for sale in the China.

China set down regulations for its joint venture legislation relating to automobile manufacturing in 1994 and 2004. Given the rapid growth China’s automobile industry has seen during the past four years a change in legislation in 2010 would not be off track.

One wonders how this news will affect China’s automobile industry before 2010? Will foreign manufacturers put joint venture negotiations on hold until regulations change so they can go it alone in China? My own bet is “No” because China is far too important a market to put on hold for 2-3 years. We may see foreign investors trying to insert clauses into joint venture agreements allowing for pre-arranged buy-out terms once regulations do change, but it will be interesting to see if any Chinese partners agree with such terms. Exciting times.

BMW and Microsoft Partner to Form new Car Company?

Published by Charlie April 16th, 2008 in Huatai. 21 Comments

China’s HuaTai Group has purchased billboard space inside the Beijing Airport advertising their new line of SUVs in preparation for the upcoming Beijing Auto Show next week. So the first thing that visitors to Beijing will be seeing is the clean, crisp, smooth lines of these slick vehicles.

billboard-ht.jpg

The second thing visitors will look for is the HuaTai logo. When I saw it, I took a double take. HuaTai has ‘been inspired’ by Microsoft’s logo and BMW’s logo, combine the two together and produce a new logo which to my western eye’s looks to be an absolute knock-off of two of the most famous trademarks in existence.

windows-bmw.jpg

Beijing Auto Show: Conferences, Conferences, Conferences

Published by Charlie April 16th, 2008 in Beijing Car Show. 0 Comments

Ever since Beijing received the bid to host the Beijing 2008 Olympics everything in Beijing has become big. Beijing now hosts the most massive and most beautiful airport in the world. Truly. If you fly in from overseas you will be amazed.

Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition is no different. The show is being held at the new, massive China International Exhibition Center New Venue in the Tianzhu Airport Industrial Zone between the 5th and 6th ring roads near the Beijing Airport. It is huge. But still, not big enough for Beijing: they have built temporary tents to house the auto parts section of the exhibition.

And this year there will be more conferences than any human can possibly attend. But you may find many of them very interesting:

5th Automotive Logistics China Conference
Tuesday April 15, 2008 to Thursday April 17, 2008
Shangri-La Hotel, Beijing, China

Automotive Manufacturing in China
OEM & Supplier Strategies in the Next Decade
Wednesday April 16, 2008 to Sunday April 20, 2008
Great Wall Sheraton Hotel, Beijing, China

Automotive News China Conference
China: The Myths, The Realities and the Possibilities
Thursday April 17, 2008 to Sunday April 20, 2008
China World Hotel

2008 China Automotive Export Logistics Forum
Friday April 18, 2008
Beijing Central Garden Hotel
No.18, Gaoliangqiao Xie Street, Haidian District, Beijing, China

2008 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition Welfare Special Performance
Sunday April 20, 2008, 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm
China International Exhibition Center New Venue, Beijing, China

All of these conferences in addition to another twenty seminars listed on the official 2008 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition site and a few private invitation conferences we are still waiting for details on. We will be trying to cover a little of all of these conferences and will follow up with articles about each one of them.

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