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Why SUV in China so popular? Given the density and amount of cars on road would a subcompact electric vehicle be more suitable? @TaiShang

Mindset. Fascination for biggest, largest, longest, highest, widest... This is great power mindset. Some have that, some does not. More of a question of history and genetics.

I do not in fact object that sort of mindset. You know the West has devoured most of global resources in a very unequal fashion. We claiming a certain portion it (paid for mostly in cash upfront) is no harm.

If the roads are dense, then, wider roads need to be built.

That's a very good looking SUV, good job by Geely, I love to get one! Well despite Li Shufu has made a lot of personal success (his net worth already $6.7B) but Geely is still a very young company, as per Fortune 2000 by market cap world's top 10 auto & truck conglomerates in 2016 are:
  1. Toyota Group (Toyota Motor, Denso, Toyota Industries, Aisin Seiki, Toyota Boshoku), $242.6 B
  2. Volkswagen-Porsche Group (Volkswagen AG, Porsche Automobil) $89.7 B
  3. Nissan-Renault Group (Nissan Motor, Renault, Valeo, JKEKT) $88.5 B
  4. Daimler, $75.4 B
  5. Hyundai-Kia Group (Hyundai Motor, Kia Motor, Hyundai Mobis) $67.4 B
  6. BMW Group, $60.4 B
  7. Ford Motor, $54.2 B
  8. Honda Motor, $51.1 B
  9. General Motors, $49.6 B
  10. SAIC, $34.4 B
Now Geely market cap is about $12.2 B, I wish it will be among top 10 in the foreseeable future, wish the same for BYD (now $18 B), Great Wall Motor and Chery Motor. In China domestic market, just as Li Shufu has said, government should level the playing field for them. SOE like SAIC should downplay JV business and pivot to proprietary brands.

Wow, GM has declined so much! Once there was a saying I read on the books: What is good for GM is good for the US.

Now we have US reporters who ask a bragging Trump and marvel at the idea that the tomahawks fired at Syria were "unmanned."
 
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@TaiShang Pictures of Chang'an CS55, a new SUV model to debut in the coming Shanghai Auto Show

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Wow, GM has declined so much! Once there was a saying I read on the books: What is good for GM is good for the US.
Today the market cap of GM may no longer appears to be big among top players, but bear in mind it was directly bailed out during 2008 financial crisis, moreover, SAIC has been instrumental in reviving GM. Relationship between the two firms are mutually-beneficial through the early 2000s, but when the 2008 downturn brought GM to the point of bankruptcy the partnership took a turn. Because the US auto task force refused to let GM spend TARP aid on its foreign operations, GM was forced to turn to SAIC for help. The resulting deal would forever alter the delicate balance of power in the Shanghai GM joint venture and drive GM to restructure its entire global strategy around its partnership with SAIC.

GM’s Asian-market woes in 2009 centered around its Korean operations, then known as GM-Daewoo Automotive Technology Company (GMDAT). Once GM’s global “home room” for engineering and exporting low-cost small cars for developing markets including China, GMDAT ran into serious cash flow problems when it lost $1.5 billion in foreign exchange alone in the first quarter of 2009. With GM headed towards bankruptcy, its US government rescuers unwilling to pay for overseas problems, credit markets largely frozen by the financial crisis and the Korean Development Bank refusing to extend loans beyond the $2 billion already owed to it by GMDAT, GM’s only option was to turn to its Chinese partner for liquidity.

By mid-November 2009, GM suddenly had $491 million to spend on GMDAT’s turnaround, but it wasn’t immediately clear where the money had come from. That December, the first details emerged: GM had sold 1% of Shanghai GM to SAIC, giving the Chinese partner a controlling stake in the venture. It also turned its struggling GM India division into a joint venture, with SAIC receiving a 50% stake in return for an additional investment of $350 million. At the time, GM executives said the deal would also allow SAIC to consolidate earnings from the joint venture and that in exchange it had helped GM “achieve some funding for other activities from the Chinese banking sector, which would have been difficult to do on our own.” In its 2010 year-end SEC filing, GM eventually clarified that SAIC had helped it secure a $400 million commercial bank loan, with its stake in Shanghai-GM as collateral.

SAIC also benefited handsomely with access to GM’s infrastructure, brands, and cooperation in the wake of the deal, SAIC has become the fastest-growing automaker in the world by market value. GM’s latest products and platforms debut in China before other markets, and its $12 billion three-year investment plan for China is more than twice the $5.4 billion allocated for the US market over the same period. Across Asia, there more signs of SAIC’s rise: GM’s Indonesian operations are being replaced by a S-GM-Wuling plant, GM canceled a planned expansion in Thailand after SAIC entered the market with a different partner, and GM moved the last remnants of its dwindling “international operations” to Singapore. SAIC did reduce its stake in GM India to just 7% in 2012 but only because, according to GM’s Socia, SAIC was ready to compete with GM. Since both companies will soon be offering the same family of emerging-market vehicles they are developing together in Shanghai, SAIC’s confidence is hardly surprising. With GM- and jointly-developed technology already underpinning its lineup of cars bearing the classic British MG (Morris Garages) brand, SAIC is also pushing into markets like Australia and the UK where GM has been in retreat for years.

Backing from SAIC as well as Chinese commercial banks has been instrumental to GM's overseas business hence its market value. Looking forward, relation between SAIC and GM is expected to get closer and mutually beneficial, in which GM maintains momentum and SAIC will continue to grow through a hybrid "engagement-competition" strategy.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Wheels-Chinese-Roads-General/dp/0470828617?tag=quartz07-20
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467858/000119312511051462/d10k.htm
 
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China's SAIC in Deal With Iran Co. for MG360
A Sino-Iranian joint venture, MG Pars Motor is set to produce 10,000 units of MG360 in 2017
Tuesday, April 18, 2017

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A Sino-Iranian joint venture, MG Pars Motor, has produced a test run of 80 MG360 sedans, during the last days of the last fiscal that ended on March 20.

The 50-50 joint venture was created three years ago between China’s SAIC Motors and AZVICO— a subsidiary of Iran Khodro Group based in the northwestern city of Tabriz.

According to the local automotive website Donyaye Khodro, the 80 units have received number plates and are being test driven by Iranian and Chinese engineers in the city.

The price of the model is estimated to be about 700 million rials ($18,500). This is while the car that is made in China is offered for $12,800 in the UAE The report said sales of the model would start in summer.

In September 2016, CEO of AZVICO Nasser Naqdi announced the upcoming production of the model in Iran saying “MG 360 is the newest car to be produced in Iran”.

Naqdi said price and production rate will be “determined by the market.”

He said the two companies invested $20 million each in the JV and future direct investment will increase to $400 million.

The first units have been assembled from completely knocked-down parts. However, sources close to the company say the Iranian company is aiming to increase its share in the production by launching spare part factories.

For joint car ventures, the new rules say a minimum of 20% of a vehicle’s parts must be produced in Iran.

Naqdi referred to technology transfer as one of the main goals of the joint venture and said the factory’s paint shops and body production line will be established in the coming years.

According to company chief, MG Pars Motor will produce 10,000 cars in 2017 and increase it to 20,000 units a year later.

The company will introduce at least one new model annually to the local market, he said. “SAIC RX5 and another SUV will be made in 2017 and 2018 in Iran.”

MG Pars is also planning to introduce hybrid vehicles produced by the Chinese company.

MG Pars is headed by a Chinese company official Lin Yong. He also will be in charge of distribution. In an earlier interview, Yong named Iran as “one of the industrial hubs of the region”.

He said, “In addition to local sales, the cars will be exported to Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.”

During the same interview, Lin noted that SAIC is in negotiations with local parts producers for further collaboration.

SAIC’s MG also has a distribution deal with local car dealer Media Motors for import of the MG3 MG6, GT and GS models.

MG360 Review

The MG 360 comes with a 109 horsepower engine with a dual variable camshaft and a 4 automatic BOSCH engine management system transmission along with a multi-mode Intelligent Control and a Max Power.

It boasts an 8-inch touch screen. The car also has a rear camera with mirror play and Bluetooth as well as multimedia options.

According to the MG official website, the model has been built with a USD (Ultimate Stiffness Design) reinforced body structure with 70% high strength steel.

https://financialtribune.com/articles/auto/62589/chinas-saic-in-deal-with-iran-co-for-mg360
 
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If Any Chinese Car Company Will Take On The World, It's This One

Bertel Schmitt ,
CONTRIBUTOR
I have written about the auto industry all my life.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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Bertel Schmitt - Control room of Geely's engine test center in Hangzhou, China

When will Chinese carmakers follow the Japanese, and Korean example, and take over the world? If it happens, who will it be? Sitting at a desk overlooking a glitzy Shanghai skyline that can put Manhattan, or downtown Tokyo to shame, I predict that scrappy Geely will be at the vanguard of Chinese automakers to take on the world. I write this after having seen Geely’s R&D center in Hangzhou, after having talked to its production engineers in Geely’s hometown some three hours south of Shanghai, and after having been granted a rare glimpse behind the closed doors of the company’s design studios in Shanghai. I am rarely impressed, but I am.

“The Chinese car industry is ready to enter a new phase, and to break out of its home market,” Geely’s marketing chief, Alain Visser, told me in Shanghai. “I am confident that we will be first, but I would be very surprised if we are the only ones.”

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Bertel Schmitt - Geely Group CMO Alain Visser introduces Lynk&Co brand to China

Visser was marketing chief of Ford and GM in Europe before he signed up at Volvo. Geely bought Volvo in 2010 for a bargain-basement $1.5 billion from a cash-strapped Ford, when the Detroit automaker fought for post-carmageddon survival. It was one of those rare deals that worked all around. Ford came through alive, if not entirely unscathed (it also sold Jaguar Land Rover to India’s Tata, Aston Martin to private investors, and its controlling share in Mazda to Japanese banks.) Volvo was not dismantled and shipped-off to China, as many predicted. Volvo engineers were given free rein to develop technology, and they became early leaders in autonomous tech. Geely finally had a leg up on the competition. Eventually, it also had Visser as CMO of the whole group.

The deal was especially good for Geely. Before the Volvo takeover, it made 330,000 cars a year, approximately the same number as the near-dead Volvo. Last year in 2016, Geely group sold some 1.3 million units globally, spokespeople told me in Hangzhou, where the company is headquartered. 766,000 of the cars were sold by Geely, mostly in China, with a few going to South America, Africa, and elsewhere. Volvo sold around 534,000 units globally in 2016, I was told. That volume was created, Tesla-watchers take note, with “about 20 different models,” said Geely spokesman Sumi Yang after performing a quick mental count, and after explaining that “the number changes quickly.” This year, Geely wants to sell between 1 and 1.2 million units, and it wants to reach 2 million by 2020. Volvo wants to sell another 800,000 units by 2020, Volvo boss Hakan Samuelson told The Economist. That 2.8 million target does not appear far-fetched at all. Group-wide, Geely already operates 12 factories, 9 in China, and one each in Sweden, Belgium, and England. Tesla wants to produce one million cars by 2020 in one factory in Freemont, California. Compare that to Geely, and you are beginning to have doubts. With Tesla.

For this year, Geely alone plans the launch of nine new models. I was shown all of them, and a few of next year, modeled in clay, after I surrendered my smartphone and signed a quite toothless NDA to gain access to Geely’s design studio, housed in a former World Expo building on the Pudong side of Shanghai.

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Geely’s team of 500 designers, spread over studios in Pasadena, CA, Barcelona, Spain, Gothenburg, Sweden, and Shanghai, won’t run out of work anytime soon. “The Chinese market develops so quickly that we launch a new facelift each year, and a completely new car every three,” told me Geely’s Shanghai studio chief Guy Burgoyne, a bearded Aussie who designed Holden cars before signing up with Geely in 2013. At his Shanghai Studio, some 40 projects are cooking in various stages of completion.

Geely’s far-flung design operation is run by Peter Horbury, a flamboyant and outspoken Brit who endeared himself to the British media with his eminent quotability. After a few glasses at the Shanghai studio, he regaled us with war stories, like when he stated at his arrival at Volvo in 1991 that “designers are not there to make the work of engineers look prettier. Engineers are there to make our designs work.” His favorite line is that the obscenely expensive stamping tools needed to make a car, “cost the same, whether the product looks ugly, or nice.”

At Geely, the 3D data in the CAD computers are turned into real parts by CNC machines eating trough blocks of plastic at frightening speed. The parts are assembled into verification models, and subjected to the critical eyes of the designer. If a subtle detail won’t pass scrutiny, a dot sticker sends the part back to the designer’s CAD computer. Only when a car is dotless, the design is deemed fit to be unleashed on the production line, and finally, the populace. “Chinese cars were rightfully criticized in the past for their lack of finesse,” said Horbury, and he is making sure that this no longer applies to Geely. Geely is well on its way to an up-positioned brand that caters to what its marketers call a “newfound nationalism among younger Chinese car-buyers,” who want something else than their father’s Volkswagen, or Buick.

Geely has come a very long way in a very short time since it flooded the Chinese market some 15 years ago with dowdy conveyances based on technology that harkened back to a disco-era Daihatsu Charade. Geely cars now have a common, and quite pleasing design language. The underpinning technology also is a far cry from the old hand-me-down platforms that were shipped to China by global OEMs by the time the tools were already worn-out.

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Bertel Schmitt - Shanghai design chief Guy Burgoyne introduces new Geely MPV at the Shanghai Auto Show

The Chinese joint venture model requires that a foreign automaker can hold not more than 50% of the shares in a Chinese operation. A Chinese automaker must own the other half of the joint venture. This is frequently decried as a ticket to steal foreign technology. Over the years, just the opposite emerged. Large Chinese automakers see no need to invest heavily into R&D, it comes in a FEDEX envelope, or via high-speed data line from Detroit, Wolfsburg, or Tokyo. The Chinese joint venture model made fat and lazy. Innovation is only learned by actively innovating, and by taking part in the innovation process. As owner of world-class automaker Volvo, Geely engineers can be 5 years ahead of their colleagues at mostly state-owned joint ventures.
 
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“One of the great things of Geely is that it’s an independent company,” told me David Ancona, who heads Geely’s smallest design studio in Barcelona. “All other Chinese companies are either in bed with their foreign partners, or under too much government influence. They use second-hand platforms and second-hand drive-trains. They may have the parts, but they don’t own, or understand the technology.”

Geely on the other hand invested another $10 million into Volvo, and in the development of a state-of-the-art modular technology they call Compact Modular Architecture (CMA.) “With CMA, we have a fantastic basis,” said Ancona. “In many ways, Geely is at the level of a mainstream European manufacturer.”
The boss of Geely’s R&D center agrees. “The CMA architecture is very similar to MQB,” Zhengnan Hu declared, referring to Volkswagen’s trailblazing “Modularer Querbaukasten” architecture, that turned previously arcane automotive technology in something close to a household name. In one aspect, CMA is ahead of MQB. Volkswagen’s MQB demands investments into completely new production lines, CMA cars however can be built on existing lines of Volvo and Geely.

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Geely

Geely engineer explains one of many engine test bays at Hangzhou R&D center

I heard that at a tour of Geely’s brand-new R&D center in Hangzhou, which opened just 5 months ago after a close to $1bln investment. 7,000 engineers work here already, while construction workers make room for another 1,000 engineers. The center houses rows and rows of engine testing stations, supplied by Austrian powertrain expert AVL. In a separate building is a complete pilot production line. It does not produce cars. This is where production lines are tested, where robots and people are trained, before car manufacturing starts elsewhere in earnest. Tesla watchers take note: This is how it is done at a professional mainstream car manufacturer, and Geely definitely is one of them. While Tesla needs (but does not yet have) a separate production line for its upcoming Model 3, Geely currently makes 3 models on the same line. Soon, 12 different models will come off a new line that is being built at Geely, told me its chief of pilot production Gao Wen, who led me around sparking welding robots (the expensive kind, made by ABB) and who patiently answered any question I threw at him.

Design and development play a leading role in Geely’s ultimate advantage: Its speedy time to market. Developing a new car from the ground up usually takes around 5 years, at Geely, it can be done in 3 years, or less, without cutting corners with details, quality, or testing. Engineers at the R&D Center work two shifts per day. Each new Geely car is tested for some 100,000 miles before it goes into final production, Hu told me. The true reason why Toyota and Daimler invested into Tesla was to find out how Elon Musk could develop cars faster than anybody. When they found out that paying customers were used as beta testers, they quickly dumped the stock at a big profit.


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Bertel Schmitt

Geely launches its Lynk&Co car brand at the Shanghai Auto Show

Smart, and listening to hordes of western car execs it has hired, Geely is not intent on flooding the world with cheap Geely cars. Geely will remain a brand mostly for the Chinese market, I was told. With Volvo, Geely owns an established global brand with pedigree. On top of that, Geely launches the Lynk&Co brand, a line of cars for the world, developed in Europe, and made in China. Last week in Shanghai, the brand was launched onto the Chinese market, complete with two hot offers: Lifetime warranty, and free mobile Internet bandwidth.

I have seen many car factories during my more than three decades in the business. I have only once been let into an operating design studio, and never was I taken around a pilot production line, because both are the inner sanctums of the car business. China’s car factories usually are completely walled-off to outsiders, and especially to nosy journalists with cameras. Opening its holy of holiest to outside eyes, Geely couldn’t have demonstrated better that it is way ahead of the Chinese auto industry, and probably ahead of many carmakers in the world.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bertel...take-on-the-world-then-this-one/#1be855336c1a
 
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“The Chinese market develops so quickly that we launch a new facelift each year, and a completely new car every three,”

Damn that's a fast life cycle.
 
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Mod: Trolling with outdated material dated 2009
These are filmier but not identical even car body is change. Yes they can't change two head lights into one and do thing like that. They took inspiration from below but it is different look if you notice. Every manufacturer have design rights and you can't make similar to that or you got sue and it a International law. So you comments not meet as per your call
 
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These are filmier but not identical even car body is change. Yes they can't change two head lights into one and do thing like that. They took inspiration from below but it is different look if you notice. Every manufacturer have design rights and you can't make similar to that or you got sue and it a International law. So you comments not meet as per your call

In car designs. There is no 'inspirational'. Each and every car has a unique design to it. (Except some Chinese cars) The design has intellectual rights in other countries. Except in China which has no regard for intellectual property.
If you think it's ok to copy and design. Each company spend millions of dollars in funding design for a car. This also involves hard work of a designer who works tirelessly for months to get a design approved. So, least show some respect for the men behind those beautiful designs. :confused:

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@My-Analogous That's the person who designed Range Rover. Then this:o:. This is not inspiration this is copy-paste
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When everything else failed, they fall back to "copy & paste" accusation. They just can't handle the truth that the article is trying to convert. What a loser.

It was expected was it not? Copy&Paste is as simple as mouse clicks that's how China managed to copy J-20 from F-22, FC-31 from F-35. We take a good look and open abracadabra open sesame we have a pasted product
 
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