Voices from the Frankfurt Motor Show

Updated: 2013-09-16 08:17

(China Daily)

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Editor's note: The industry's largest event worldwide, the Frankfurt Motor Show is underway in the German city from Sept 12 to 22, where executives from the world's leading automakers and component suppliers once again confirmed the importance of the China market. China's local companies said they want to use the event to facilitate their efforts in going global.

India will be the next place for Daimler to start cooperation with local partners. But no other country could compare with China in terms of our aggressive investment.

We are well on the way to our target of making China the largest single market for Mercedes in the world by 2015. We are expanding our factory in China with 2 billion euros ($2.66 billion) worth of heavy investment, we are opening 75 new vehicle sales outlets this year and we will also add the fourth local produced model - the GLA-Class we debut today - in 2015.

Volkswagen is the first automaker to already meet the European Union's new emission target that requires a no more than 95g of CO2 emission per kilometer by 2020. Electrification is very important for a further fuel economy and emission reduction.

The electric models also play a strategic role in our China market. We will soon bring imported electric vehicles to China. And we also plan to locally produce our plug-in hybrids in China in the near future.

North America and China will continue to drive the global automotive industry's growth, while Europe will gradually start to recover. Vehicle density in China has just recently reached a tenth of Western Europe's and the country's dynamic growth will continue.

Since 2003, China's and India's share of global vehicle production has tripled, and Bosch's sales in these countries have increased sevenfold. China will continue to be our main focus in the future.

We'll continue to present our brands and products in the world's most important auto show for a third time, two years later.

Participating in the show is the first step (in our globalization move). To make Chang'an a true international automaker, we will invest $820 million in 10 major overseas markets by 2020 including manufacturing facilities in Russia, Brazil and Iran. By then we hope to have 400,000 units in annual sales outside China, contributing 30 percent to our total revenue.

Voices from the Frankfurt Motor Show

Voices from the Frankfurt Motor Show

(China Daily USA 09/16/2013 page9)

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