Guangzhou hitches fortunes to new energy car production

Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province, is competing to become a production base for new energy vehicles in the coming years.

According to the city's blueprint, the southern metropolis has plans to be capable of manufacturing more than 300,000 new energy cars annually by 2020, and the city's new energy car ownership is estimated to come to more than 200,000 within three years.

"Guangzhou is expected to become a new, foreign-oriented 'new energy and intelligent Internet Plus' innovative automobile industrial development zone," according to the Work Plan for the Development of the New Energy Vehicles in Guangzhou 2017-20.

The plan was passed by the executive conference of Guangzhou's city government earlier this month.

Guangzhou, home to a total of nine whole car production facilities, including plants of Japan's three major carmakers Toyota, Honda and Nissan, reached an annual automobile industrial production worth 434.63 billion yuan ($66.87 billion) in 2016.

The city produced more than 2.63 million cars last year and its output of new energy cars was up 86.3 percent over the previous year.

In term of new energy cars alone, Guangzhou has the production facilities of Guangzhou Automobile Group Co Ltd (GAC), BAIC Motor (Guangzhou), BYD and Japan's Nissan.

GAC, one of the major car makers in China, has plans to develop 10 new models of new energy cars in the coming five years and construct special production platforms for those vehicles.

More than 500,000 new energy cars were sold in China last year.

Zhao Fuquan, an automobile specialist from the prestigious Tsinghua University, said environment friendly new energy cars will be the development trend in China in the future.

"Carmakers will have great potential for development" by focusing on the production of more new energy cars," Zhao said.

Adding "internet+big data" will be the competitive core for many automobile companies, he said.

Guangzhou's improving investment climate and ecology has been attracting more big name automobile and internet companies to the city in recent years.

Last month, internet giant Tencent signed a strategic cooperation agreement with GAC to jointly develop the industry and provide the services involved in auto-related internet services, intelligent driving, cloud platforms, big data and ecocars.

On Sept 17, two of World Top 500 companies, Hitachi and Honda, signed a contract to jointly develop a motor system project－for carmakers around the world－in Guangzhou's Zengcheng district.

According to the contract, a new joint venture company will be set up by Hitachi Automotive Systems Ltd and Honda Motor Co in November while construction of the project will officially kick off next year. Commercial production of the project is expected to start in 2020.

And on Oct 13, construction of the southern base of China Automotive Technology and Research Center formally began in Zengcheng. The project, which cost more than 1.85 billion yuan, is a base as regional headquarters and a public technology service platform for testing whole cars, automobile parts and new energy cars.