A unit of Guangzhou Automobile Group is considering building its first foreign car plant in Russia despite political and currency troubles in that country, a senior executive said.
“When the situation is as such, there are opportunities,” said Wu Song, director and general manager of GAC Motor, a division of Guangzhou Auto that produces the group’s own brand. “When there is stability, opportunity is gone.”
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He said that a decision whether to build the plant will be made in 2015. The plant would begin with annual assembly of fewer than 50,000 cars from kits.
Wu said the company also hopes to begin selling cars in the US before the end of 2017. “Any later than that would be too late since the opportunity would be gone,” he said.
“My main goal is to make GAC Motor the very first, world-class Chinese auto brand,” Wu said.
The company was already working to identify possible dealers and exploring safety and emission-related regulations needed to sell cars in the US market, he said.
Wu said he was confident GAC cars could meet such requirements since they were designed and developed with meeting international standards in mind.
GAC Motor, which is the only Chinese auto maker exhibiting at the Detroit show, launched the GS4 sports-utility vehicle at the event.
Guangzhou Auto is China’s sixth largest car maker in terms of sales. According to Guangzhou Auto’s statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the group sold 1.17m vehicles last year, up 17% from a year earlier.
Guangzhou Auto’s car sales come primarily from those made with its foreign joint-venture partners, which include Toyota Motor, Honda Motor, Mitsubishi Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. GAC Motor and its GAC Motor brand of sedans and sport-utility vehicles accounted for around 116,000 of the group’s total sales in 2014, Wu said.
GAC Motor is targeting sales of its own-brand cars of between 160,000 and 180,000 cars in 2015 and 1m by 2020, according to Wu.
He said the company introduced three new models last year and expects to launch two to three new models this year. The aim is to have a portfolio of 20 models by 2020, up from the current half dozen.
Chinese brands – which have never enjoyed great popularity abroad – are also suffering at home. In the first 11 months of 2014, Chinese brands’ share of the domestic passenger-vehicle market fell to 38% from 42% in 2011, official data showed.
