Could China become the next big car manufacturer? Well, quite possibly if you ask Geely, China’s biggest privately owned car manufacturer. It is currently developing six model platforms, dedicated to launching nine new cars over the next year and a half, and by 2015, the company cites 42 new models will be on the market. In the recent article, The ambition of Geely, from The Economist, it highlights Geely’s aspirations, but also raises some concerns. Namely, its dependence on government tax breaks, which is likely to be a main reason of its increased sales in the first half of the year. There are also concerns surrounding the safety of its cars and not being on par with Western levels. In a crash test by a Russian car magazine of the Geely CK, the driver and passenger were given a 10 percent survival rate.
Nevertheless, this is not stopping Geely. The company aims at selling 1.3 million cars abroad by 2015 (30,000 foreign cars were sold in 2008). Geely has not only increased employment levels, but has created its own university, the Zhejiang Automotive Engineering Institute, and has assets abroad as well. It also plans to build factories in South Africa and Mexico. And, according to the article, Geely might be in the game to buy a European car company.
So Geely has big plans, we’ll just have to wait and see what develops.
Click here to read the full article from The Economist.
You might also want to visit Geely’s website and view some of their videos.
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