Category: Industry News

While the U.S. are still reluctant to reduce their car emissions, the Chinese government wants to improve its status in the world and nowadays the best way to do this is by reducing its carbon footprint. Beijing has therefore decided to forbid the sale of 444 vehicles because they do not meet current energy saving regulations.

This is the first time the central government has taken action to solve the country’s transportation problem. Recently Beijing mayorl announced it would ban 1 million cars from entering the capital from 7 to 20 August next year during the olympic games. Likewise the mayor of Shenzhen has urged its citizens to stop buying cars.

Source photo: Business Week

The Japanese automotive industry is famous for its just-in-time production system, so effective that carmakers all over the world have emulated it. Unfortunately, despite Japan’s efforts to plan for every eventuality, preparing for an earthquake is almost impossible.

As you may know, there was a severe earthquake last Monday in Niigata prefecture, 155 miles north west of Tokyo. Riken, a large automotive parts supplier with its main factory based in Niigata, has been obliged to stop production due to damages caused by the earthquake. Riken produces 70% of universal joints and 40% of piston rings in Japan. The Nissan subsidiary JATCO has also been forced to stop producing its gearboxes.

The effects of this disruption to the supply chain are significant. Nissan will stop producing cars in its twelve Japan-based factories until next Monday. Toyota’s production of cars has been suspended until Sunday. Honda will decrease its production for the duration of next week. Suzuki will have to decrease its production by 10,000 units for five days.

What a mess for such a proud and highly-organised industry. We can be sure that Japanese carmakers are already working on a solution in preparation for the next earthquake.

Peter Sauber and Le Crédit Suisse, a swiss bank, will sell the majority of their shares to BMW. Early 2006, BMW will the take over the reins of Sauber and create a new team called BMW. Peter Sauber should work as a counselor, as will no longer rule the team. The Hinwill factory will continue to be a swiss company anyway but it’ll be a sattelite of BMW, which will increase the number of its employees.
The transfer of share will be made in two times, BMW first buying the majority of those held by Peter Sauber, then, in 2008, purchasing those of the swiss bank.
Peter Sauber, 61, considers the purchase of his team by BMW as a good thing, since it’s become very hard for teams like his to keep up with top teams in terms of performance. Since the arrival of important car makers like Renault, Toyota or Mercedes, raising funds has become harder and harder for independant private teams. Max Mosley wants to prevent independant teams from leaving the F1 by setting new rules imposing to cut the costs by 90% in 2008. By this time, those teams won’t have left, chances are they’ll have been bought by carmakers. Too late, Max…

Car sales were still decreasing in May, but on a slower pace. The total number of registrations amounted to 187,900, but its 3.4% fall is the smallest so far in 2005. The loss of Rover and the rise of interest rates partly account for this fall. Chances are that this trend should be inverted in June.
The fleet market share was up from 48.6% a year ago, reaching 49.9% now. The corollary of this was a 5.3% drop of the private sector volume, with a 45.4% share. Business sales dropped by 11.5%, representing 4.7% of the market.

As for the diesels, they accounted for 36.8% of the market, the highest rate this year. The convertibles followed the same trend, and reached a record 6%

With the fall of Rover, the share of imported cars grew up to 83.3% of the market.

Top 10 registrations for May 2005.

–         1 : Ford Focus – 12,373

–         2 : Vauxhall Astra – 10,663

–         3 : Vauxhall Corsa – 7,872

–         4 : Renault Mégane – 7,229

–         5 : VW Golf – 5,972

–         6 : Ford Mondeo – 5,965

–         7 : Ford Fiesta – 5,473

–         8 : Peugeot 206 – 5,361

–         9 : Peugeot 307 – 4,641

–         10 : Renault Clio – 4,058

Top 10 carmakers.

–         1 : Ford – 28,529

–         2 : Vauxhall – 26,513

–         3 : Renault – 13,548

–         4 : VW – 12,938

–         5 : Peugeot – 12,324

–         6 : Toyota – 10,303

–         7 : BMW – 8,919

–         8 : Citroën – 7,662

–         9 : Nissan – 7,568

–         10 : Audi – 6,259

Source : SMMT

The British Department of Trade and Industry has launched an inquiry into the accounts of Phoenix Venture Holdings, which owned MG-Rover.

Secretary of Trade and Industry Alan Johnson wants to know exactly what happened to the group since the appointment of Administrators on April 8 was lethal shock on the employees as well as the suppliers.

Phoenix Venture Holdings is suspected of having traded while being insolvent, which is punishable with prison. Nevertheless, it’s legal to trade if there are good chances of recovery. In other words, Alan Johnson wants to make sure that SAIC was really willing to buy MG-Rover as it was claimed.

Phoenix Venture Holdings had obtained a lot of money from BMW and the sale of assets around the world. What have they done with it?