TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sales of New Cars Steady in Large Markets
Volkswagen to Create About 8 New Plants By 2018
Volvo and Siemens in Electric Car Partnership
Toyota and Ford Team Up for Hybrid Trucks
Daimler to Invest $2.9 Billion with Chinese Partner BAIC
Norwegian Electric Car Maker Think Files for Bankruptcy
Lotus Wants £10m Grant for New Factory
Seasonally adjusted light-vehicle sales in the US were 7.5 per cent higher in August than a year ago, and just slightly below July’s 12.2m units, according to Autodata.
General Motors, America’s biggest carmaker, reported August sales that were 18 per cent higher than a year earlier. GM stuck to its current forecast for full-year vehicle sales in the US of 13m to 13.5m, albeit at the low end of the range. This translates to between 12.8m and 13.3m cars and light trucks.
Ford Motor’s August sales were 11 per cent higher than a year ago. Chrysler’s were almost a third higher, marking its best August in four years.
Chrysler overtook Toyota for the third time in the past four months. Toyota’s US sales were 13 per cent lower than August 2010 due mostly to supply shortages caused by the Japanese earthquake.
Car sales in France, Europe’s second-largest market, rose by 3.2 per cent in August, their first increase in five months, the industry association CCFA said.
In Spain, car sales were 5.9 per cent higher in August than a year ago, their first rise in more than a year. However, the Spanish industry association, Anfac, said that this amounted to “fictitious growth”, because car sales in August 2010 were at their lowest in more than 20 years.
The data marks the first snapshot of the industry since Europe’s sovereign debt crisis and America’s debt-ceiling ruckus and credit-rating downgrade sent world stock markets down sharply last month. In most countries, August is typically one of the slowest months for car sales.
The car industry is still recovering from a deep downturn in 2008 and 2009, which forced governments around the world to offer scrappage subsidies or low-interest bail-out loans in order to keep carmakers afloat.
In Japan, sales of new cars, not including mini-vehicles, fell by 25.5 per cent last month from the previous year, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said. The decline reflected in part the disruption from the March earthquake and tsunami and government subsidies that were in place a year ago and that artificially lifted car sales.
Maruti Suzuki, India’s top-selling carmaker, reported an 18 per cent drop in August sales on a year ago. The company blamed the drop on disruption to production at its Manesar plant near New Delhi.
Suzuki said it will dissolve troubled 2-year partnership with Volkswagen. Suzuki's board decided to get out because of worry it would lose its autonomy, the Associated Press reported from Tokyo. VW owns more than 19% of Suzuki; Suzuki holds about 1.5% of VW. Suzuki said it try to work out a deal to unwind those stakes.
VW recently accused Suzuki of violating their agreement by buying diesel engines from rival Fiat, but it also said it wanted to stay in the agreement. "We have no plans to sell our stake in Suzuki," said spokesman Michael Brendel. He said talks were needed. "We are keen on continuing the cooperation."
Osamu Suzuki, Suzuki's chairman, said that Suzuki saw the December 2009 deal as a way to accelerate its development of green vehicles -- hybrids, electrics and fuel cells. But he said none are underway, it has gotten little access to VW technology and the deal now is a distraction.
The alliance was to have included product development, production and sales, with a focus on hybrids and EVs. Suzuki was seen as needing VW's financial and engineering muscle to help develop such products.
VW was seen as getting help with minicars and a footprint in Asia, where it must grow to meet its goal to be No. 1 in the world by 2018. Suzuki may be a bit player in the U.S. and some other markets, but it is the biggest seller of passenger cars in India, which some experts see on its way to becoming the No. 3 world market.
Suzuki's Maruti Suzuki unit, sold 1.13 million vehicles in India in its last fiscal year ended in March, according to Automotive News, nearly half of its 2.64 million global sales. VW sold 53,300 cars there in 2010, according to Auto News.
German car maker Volkswagen AG (VOW.XE) aims to create about eight new factories outside of its home region of Europe by 2018, according to an interview with Volkswagen Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn in the latest edition of Automotive News Europe.
"More capacity is needed for more volumes, by 2018 we will have around 70 plants in operation," the magazine quotes Winterkorn as saying.
Volkswagen currently has 62 factories, 40 of them in Europe.
Winterkorn expects the strongest demand for cars and light trucks from China, and said he forecasts 50% growth to 28 million units by 2018.
Volkswagen's global market share was 11.4% in 2010, and Winterkorn tells the magazine he expects it to grow to about 12% this year.
He adds that Volkswagen could meet its goal of 10 million annual sales in 2018 earlier, "thanks to many new models and growing markets."
Volvo, the Swedish carmaker owned by China’s Geely, has formed a partnership with Siemens, the German engineering group, to develop electric cars and the equipment needed to run them.
Siemens’ industrial head told the Financial Times that the group was in talks with several other carmakers to provide them with hardware for electric cars, and that it saw this as a “significant” future business.
The two companies plan to integrate the technology initially into an electric version of Volvo’s small C30 hatchback, which the Swedish carmaker will begin producing in small volumes this year. Volvo will deliver up to 200 vehicles to Siemens for internal testing by the end of 2012.
Volvo next year also plans to begin selling a rechargeable hybrid version of its V60 station wagon.
The partnership is the first significant technology tie-up with another company for Volvo, one of the car industry’s smallest mass-market producers, since Geely bought it from Ford Motor for $1.5bn last year.
Toyota and Ford Motor unveiled plans recently to jointly develop rear-wheel drive hybrid technology to improve the fuel efficiency of pick-up trucks and sport-utility vehicles at a reasonable cost.
Takeshi Uchiyamada, head of research and development at Toyota, said tightening US fuel-economy standards “are a big challenge for us automakers. Trucks and SUVs are vehicles that American society cannot do without”.
The two companies aim to sign a definitive collaboration agreement next year and to roll out products based on the joint technology by the end of the decade.
Ford’s hybrid systems were originally partly based on licenses from Toyota. But Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s head of global product development, said the Detroit carmaker no longer uses Toyota technology or hardware.
Mr Kuzak said that “the intention here is to produce not platforms, not vehicles but enabling technology”. Ford already co-operates in other forms of powertrain technology with General Motors, PSA Peugeot Citroën and Mazda.
The two carmakers said they would also collaborate on development of standards for in-car information services, such as WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.
Toyota recently revealed the latest version of its Camry mid-sized saloon, a vehicle critical to the Japanese carmaker’s drive to recover from two years of setbacks.
The Camry has been the US’s top-selling saloon car for 13 of the past 14 years, with only Honda’s Accord coming close. The smaller Corolla is Toyota’s global bestseller.
The US is the Camry’s biggest market, accounting for more than half the 15m sold since the marque was launched in 1983. But the Camry now faces a much tougher stable of rivals, led by Hyundai’s Sonata and also including the Ford Fusion, Nissan Altima, Chevrolet Malibu and Buick Regal.
The Camry has taken a knock from last year’s mass recalls of Toyota models and, more recently, from supply shortages caused by the Japanese earthquake.
Sales were 8 per cent lower in the first seven months of this year than January-July 2010, compared with a 6 per cent expansion of the overall US light vehicle market. The Camry fell behind the Malibu, as well as the smaller Chevrolet Cruze and Ford Focus, in June.
General Motors nearly doubled its second-quarter net income to a better-than-expected $2.5bn, marking the Detroit carmaker’s sixth profitable quarter since it emerged from bankruptcy two years ago.
GM reported higher earnings in North America and Asia and a small profit in its European operation focused on Opel/Vauxhall, which recently completed a long-running and politically contentious restructuring plan.
The carmaker reported second-quarter revenue of $39.4bn, up 19 per cent on a year ago.
The company’s net income in the second quarter was nearly twice the $1.3bn it reported in the second quarter of 2010.
GM’s core North American operation reported earnings before interest and tax of $2.25bn, an improvement of 41 per cent on a year ago.
GM Europe, which includes both Opel and the carmaker’s Chevrolet operations on the continent, reported ebit-adjusted earnings of $102m, compared with a loss of $160m in the second quarter of 2010. The unit incurred restructuring costs of about $100m.
GM’s international operations – mostly in Asia – reported ebit of $573m, 14 per cent better than in the second quarter of 2010. This included equity income of $400m from its Chinese joint ventures, unchanged from a year ago.
GM South America’s ebit was $57m, down from $195m in the second quarter of last year.
The company, which was rescued in 2009 by a massive taxpayer bail-out, reported automotive cash flow of $3.8bn in April to June.
Daimler AG and Chinese partner Beijing Automotive Industry Corporation (BAIC) said they plan to jointly invest $2.9 billion to expand their activities in China, notably production of premium compact cars, including the Mercedes-Benz GLK crossover.
The investment in the Beijing Benz Automotive joint venture also will fund construction of an engine plant and a new R&D center.
The strategic framework agreement with BAIC calls for the partners to begin local assembly of the GLK later this year, followed by three models of the next-generation A- and B-Class compacts beginning in 2013.
The partners also plan to expand production capacity for the C-Class and long-wheelbase E-Class, which is currently at 80,000 units a year.
The new engine plant, which will build four-cylinder engines for Mercedes-Benz cars and vans in China, will have an annual capacity of 250,000 units.
In addition to its alliance with BAIC, Daimler also maintains partnerships in China with Fujian Automotive, Foton Motor and BYD Auto.
Tiny electric car maker Think Global AS filed for bankruptcy today in its home market of Norway after attempts to keep the company going through recapitalization and restructuring failed, the company said in a statement. It is the fourth time Think has collapsed financially in its 20-year history.
"We needed some additional funding and although we had interested investors they were not able to come to the table quickly enough," Think spokesman James Andrew told Automotive News Europe.
He declined to say how much cash Think sought to remain operating, but industry sources say the company would have needed multiple millions to keep going.
The future options for Think include a liquidation of its assets or the sale of the company to a new investor.
European output of the carmaker's lone model, the City minicar, stopped in March. At the time, the company said it halted the production line at contract manufacturer and Think investor Valmet Automotive's factory in Uusikaupunki, Finland, to rebalance its inventory.
Think sold just 1,043 units of the City in 2010.
A court-appointed trustee from Oslo-based commercial law firm Thommessen took control of the company, Andrew said. The trustee has responsibility for managing the company's assets, including wholly owned U.S. subsidiary Think North America, which has an EV production plant in Elkhart, Ind.
Although Think North America is a separate entity, its future also is in doubt because it is financially supported by the headquarters in Norway. Source: AutoWeek.com
Lotus applied for a government grant worth about £10m to build a new factory that would build three of its new cars and add up to 1,000 new jobs at its U.K. Norfolk home base in Hethel, its chief executive told the Financial Times.
The news came as the sports car maker announced plans to build its first city car, the Ethos, bringing to five the number of models it plans in an ambitious £500m expansion over the next four years. The car will be developed jointly with Proton, the Malaysian carmaker which owns Lotus. It will be sold under the Lotus brand in Europe and Proton’s in Asia, the company said.
Lotus is seeking the grant to build a new production facility for the Ethos and its planned Elite and Eterne models – all front-engine cars which its current facility is not equipped to build.
Dany Bahar, the Lotus chief, said the new facility would employ 600 to 1,000 new people, depending on sales.
If Lotus were unsuccessful in securing government aid, it plans to build the cars at contract carmakers Magna Steyr in Austria or Valmet in Finland, Mr Bahar said.
Lotus last year announced a major expansion out of niche lightweight sports cars when it unveiled five models at the Paris auto show, part of a bid to enter the league of supercar producers. The company has since postponed plans to build its proposed Elan model, because customers said it was too similar to the existing Esprit.
Mr Bahar also said that Lotus would shift production to the continent if it failed to secure government aid.
The carmaker failed to secure funding for the proposed new factory in the first, oversubscribed tranche of the regional fund, in which Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley all received conditional offers.