Volkswagen, China’s top selling car brand, has picked its third production site in its biggest market outside Germany, according to Bloomberg News.
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The report, citing officials, said Volkswagen will shift production of the best-selling, 18-year old Santana car to Yizheng city in eastern China’s Jiangsu province from Shanghai, freeing up space at its Shanghai plant to make new models such as the Gol, the Touareg sports-utility vehicle and the Golf.
Zhang Jingen, corporate secretary of Shanghai Automotive Co., the publicly traded unit of Volkswagen’s Shanghai partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., to Bloomberg News in a phone interview that Volkswagen may also build a new plant in Yizheng.
VW, planning to spend 1 billion euros ($US1.2 billion) this year in China, wants to tap the world’s fastest-growing car market to help counter slumping sales in Europe and North America, Bloomberg News said.
Volkswagen’s Chinese sales rose by 86% in the first quarter to 162,000 units, surpassing sales in the US, while China’s total car sales are expected to increase about a quarter this year from 2002, according to government forecasts, the news agency said. That compares with forecasts of a 4.3% drop in western Europe and a 3% decline in North America, the report said, citing February 14 figures from London-based World Markets Research Centre.
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