There has to be a number of things on the mind of a car manufacturing high flying exec.\u00a0 But one of the forefront thoughts a top \u201ccar buff\u201d would have to be pondering over is what effects the booming Indian and Chinese economies will have on their car industry closer to home. \u00a0Leading motor industry managers and experts have recently spent time together at Barcelona’s IESE discussing and mulling over this big topic.\u00a0 But also a talking point was the consideration of the future of the car.\u00a0 Surely electric cars are the way of the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A prime speaking candidate from the European motor industry, Bernd Gottschalk, worked over the Indian and Chinese growth on traditional car-making nations. On the one hand, strong demand from India, China and other emerging nations has been regarded as relief for established manufacturers at a time when orders from Europe and North America have very much become non-existent.\u00a0 What these manufacturers must be dreading is that these nations will be emerging as strong future competitors as well. \u00a0Dr Gottschalk did, however, emphasise that Europe still holds formidable strengths in strong branding and a capacity for innovation.\u00a0 For the time being, these two strengths would be hard to match.\u00a0 (But I\u2019m not so sure.\u00a0 Just look at the latest Kia, Hyundai and Great Wall vehicles!)<\/p>\n
Another fellow, this time from Germany \u2013 and the former head of the VDA, Ivan Hodac \u2013 showed his heart-felt emotions when he shared on how he saw the European industry having an increasingly disadvantaged position through \u201cunbalanced\u201d trade agreements between the EU and emerging countries.\u00a0 He also described the recent blending with South Korea, in particular, as disastrous.\u00a0 I wonder why!\u00a0<\/p>\n
India was represented by Abhijit Gajendragadkar, Vice President of TATA Motors.\u00a0 TATA now owns Jaguar and Land Rover in the UK, and this man spoke on his company’s success in addressing specific Indian market demands with vehicles such as the inexpensive Nano car and the ACE.\u00a0 These vehicles are simple small delivery vehicles \u2013 useful for the Indian domestic transportation logistics system.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
From China, Henry Li, General Manager of the export trade division of BYD, noted China as a fast-growing manufacturer of electric vehicles. \u00a0Mr Li said that BYD produced just 20,000 cars in 2005, but made 448,000 in 2009!\u00a0 Scary extras included his perception of this rate of growth completely eclipsing any experience felt by European manufacturers.\u00a0 In fact, he noted that the level of volume of output would very soon overtake established brands from Skoda, Seat or Volvo.\u00a0 Mr Li said that the Chinese market would top 17 million cars for the year, 2010.\u00a0 Industry estimates of 24 million sales by 2015 might well be a little on the conservative side.<\/p>\n
A huge bonus for Spain saw them producing 2.2 million cars last year, despite the global economic recession.\u00a0 Spain was second only to Germany among the car-making nations of Europe. Spain\u2019s fortunes came about when post-Franco Spain became more closely integrated with the rest of the European economy.\u00a0 The big manufacturers such as Ford and GM looked for low-cost manufacturing locations, and decided to establish plants in Spain.<\/p>\n
Electric vehicles were also a topic of big interest at the gathering.\u00a0 Nissan is the manufacturer of the Leaf, the first Electric Vehicle to emerge from a full-scale development effort by one of the major car manufacturers.\u00a0 Nissan is designing these with big production volumes in mind.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t blame them, as I think the manufacturers who are in first will benefit first.<\/p>\n
As far as marketing went, researchers have found that customers will often research their car choices in detail via the Internet.\u00a0 This was an interesting addition to the meeting\u2019s discussion points, and it was greeted with full acceptance \u2013 being a topic which was a little lighter to handle. http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/creditplus-online-zaimi.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There has to be a number of things on the mind of a car manufacturing high flying exec.\u00a0 But one of the forefront thoughts a top \u201ccar buff\u201d would have to be pondering over is what effects the booming Indian and Chinese economies will have on their car industry closer to home. \u00a0Leading motor industry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12521,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/12521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}