VW Moves Ahead on New Plant in China
Volkswagen AG and China FAW Group will begin construction next week on a 19.5 billion-yuan ($3 billion) assembly plant in Tianjin, China.
Volkswagen AG and China FAW Group will begin construction next week on a 19.5 billion-yuan ($3 billion) assembly plant in Tianjin, China. The facility is expected to begin production in 2018.
VW has maintained its aggressive expansion plans in China in spite of a continuing slowdown in market growth there. But the company tells Reuters it now expects to achieve annual capacity to make 5 million vehicles in China by 2020, a year later than the goal it touted last year.
The company's sales in China shrank 3% to 3.55 million units in 2015. But deliveries grew 6% to 955,500 units in the first quarter of this year, pacing overall market expansion. Last year VW blamed its sales downturn on a lack of capacity. It also said it will respond to China's fast-growing SUV/crossover market with 10 new models by 2020.
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