Ford Motor Co said yesterday it plans to spend US$490 million on building a third assembly plant in China, ramping up production to meet surging demand in this fast-growing market as it expands in Asia.
The factory, to be built in the central Chinese city of Chongqing, will make the next-generation Focus compact car, which Ford plans to sell globally.
The announcement from Chongqing came the day after the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker unveiled a made-in-India compact car — part of a drive to boost sales in Asia, a region the US automaker has hardly dented but is counting on to drive growth.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
“Today’s announcement reinforces our commitment to the further expansion of our China operations to meet the continued rise in demand from Chinese consumers for world-class Ford products and services,” Ford chief executive Alan Mulally said in a statement.
While in India earlier this week, Mulally said he expects one-third of global car sales to come from Asia in 20 years, a third from the Americas and a third from Europe and Russia.
China is proving a lifesaver for all the big automakers, helping offset declining sales elsewhere.
Total sales in the first eight months of the year rose to 8.33 million units, up nearly 30 percent from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. China overtook the US as the world’s largest auto market earlier this year, with sales last month jumping 82 percent from a year earlier to 1.14 million units.
The Chongqing plant, part of its joint venture Changan Ford Mazda Automobile Co, is the third for Ford in China and its second in Chongqing, an industrial hub of 30 million people sprawled along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
Slated for full completion by 2012, Ford said the plant will be equipped to make other small cars on the company’s global C-car platform in addition to the Focus.
Ford lags behind other automakers in Asia, capturing only 2 percent of auto sales there, compared with nearly 15 percent in North America and 10 percent in Europe.
Ford currently produces 450,000 vehicles in China annually. The new Chongqing facility will initially be able to manufacture 150,000 cars per year, with the capacity to produce 600,000 by 2012 when the plant is at full capacity, the company said.
The company says it plans to introduce four new vehicles in the Chinese market in three years.
The next-generation Focus, scheduled to debut in January at the North American International Auto Show, represents a shift toward C-segment vehicles that Ford says it expects to account for nearly 28 percent of global sales by 2013.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS