{"id":107708,"date":"2016-07-08T11:08:40","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T15:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=107708"},"modified":"2016-07-08T11:08:40","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T15:08:40","slug":"ford-tracking-to-sell-1-million-cars-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2016\/07\/ford-tracking-to-sell-1-million-cars-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford Tracking to Sell 1 Million Cars in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ford sales are up 5% in China in the first half of the year due to the popularity of its SUVs and crossovers, like the new Edge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ford Motor Co.’s sales in China could surpass 1 million units this year, marking the first time that will happen.<\/p>\n

Vehicle sales for Ford and its joint ventures in the first half were up 5% over last year to 564,647, with June accounting for 85,105 units sold. June results were 3% higher than June 2015.<\/p>\n

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Your Auto Insider!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe continue to see solid growth in China during the first half,\u201d said Dave Schoch, Ford Motor Co. group vice president and president of Asia Pacific. \u201cEven as the pace of growth slows and the market matures, customers continue to respond well to our products, particularly our world-class SUV line-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demand for Ford and Lincoln sport-utility vehicles was high in the first half of 2016, with combined sales of the Ford EcoSport, Kuga, Edge, Everest and Explorer and Lincoln MKC, MKX and Navigator surpassing 150,000 vehicles, a 27% increase over 2015.<\/p>\n

First-half sales for Changan Ford Automobile, Ford’s passenger car joint venture, reached 434,645 vehicles, a 10% increase compared to last year. In June, CAF sold 64,377 vehicles, up 4% compared to June 2015.<\/p>\n

Jiangling Motors Corp., Ford’s commercial vehicle investment in China, sold 19,351 vehicles in June, an increase of 5% compared to last year. First-half sales totaled 121,514 vehicles, down 7%.<\/p>\n

(GM sales rise in China in June. For more, <\/em><\/strong>Click Here<\/a><\/span><\/strong>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lincoln continues to see strong growth in China with 12,450 vehicles sold in the first half of 2016, an almost three-fold increase compared with last year. With this, the luxury brand already has exceeded last year\u2019s full-year sales of 11,630.<\/p>\n

Ford’s first-half report comes on the heels of GM’s report of record sales of more than 1.83 million units in China during the first six months of 2016.<\/p>\n

The strong sales by GM and Ford suggest that the Chinese market remains relatively stable even as growth of the Chinese economy slows.<\/p>\n

China also continues to draw in investment from global auto companies. Dongfeng Yueda Kia Automobile Co, a three-way joint venture between Kia Motors and two Chinese-owned companies, Dongfeng Motor Corp. and Jiangsu Yueda Investment Co., announced that it will ramp up domestic production.<\/p>\n

“The JV will invest $433 million to upgrade its third production plant in Yancheng, China,” according to a report by BMI Research, a division of Fitch Group.<\/p>\n

(<\/em><\/strong>Click Here<\/a><\/span><\/strong> for more about the German government not fining VW for its diesel mess.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“No timeline for the expansion has been set, which is why this investment has been identified as an upside risk rather than a revision to our forecast,” BMI said.<\/p>\n

“However, the company does intend to increase capacity at the plant from its current level of 300,000 units a year to around 450,000 units annually.\u00a0Once completed, the added capacity will bring the company’s total production capacity across its three production plants in China to 890,000 units a year.<\/p>\n

BMI said, “We remain upbeat on domestic production in China as motor companies, such as Kia, continue to invest in local production operations in order to tap into the biggest automotive market in the world.<\/p>\n

“We forecast total vehicle production to grow 3.2% in 2016 and at an annual average of 4.8% to 2020, reaching some 30.7 million vehicles,” BMI said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDomestic production will grow in line with total vehicle sales, which we forecast to grow 4.4% in 2016 and at an annual average of 5% to 2020, totaling some 31.3 million units. The trend of production growth tracking that of sales growth in terms of volumes produced is indicative of companies investing into local production to tap domestic demand rather than focusing on the export market.\u201d<\/p>\n

(To see more about Daimler\u2019s $1.2 billion acquisition of Athlon, <\/em><\/strong>Click Here<\/a><\/span><\/strong>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

An additional benefit to Kia’s investment is the benefit of eliminating the 25% tariff imposed on vehicles that are imported into the country, BMI said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ford Motor Co.’s sales in China could surpass 1 million units this year, marking the first time that will happen. The increase comes despite the slow cooling of China’s auto sales overall. Get details at TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20009,"featured_media":107709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107708"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=107708"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=107708"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=107708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}