Chinese-backed Ala. auto startup hires Italdesign Giugiaro
01-20-10, 09:21 AM
#1
Guest
Posts: n/a
Chinese-backed Ala. auto startup hires Italdesign Giugiaro
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...100119827/1193
Chinese-backed Ala. auto startup hires Italdesign Giugiaro
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- An ambitious Chinese-American automaking venture moved one step closer to reality today when it signed an agreement here with Italdesign Giugiaro to design and engineer models for U.S. production.
Hybrid Kinetic Motors Corp., of Pasadena, Calif., and the Italian engineering and design company formalized their contract in a public ceremony. Hybrid Kinetic Motors is spearheaded by the former CEO of China's Brilliance China Automotive, Yung Benjamin Yeung.
Italdesign said it will design eight vehicles for the venture, which plans to start by building 300,000 units in 2013 in a new factory in Bay Minette, Ala., that has yet to be built. The automaking venture says it aims to spend $20 billion to build 6 million vehicles a year by 2018.
Italdesign Chairman Giorgetto Giugiaro said the $500 million contract with Hybrid Kinetic Motors is by far the biggest order won by the design house in its 42-year history.
Last September, Hybrid Kinetic Motors announced plans for a manufacturing plant in Baldwin County, home to Bay Minette, northeast of Mobile, Ala.
Giugiaro said his company will design sedans, crossovers, SUVs, minivans and light commercial vehicles for Hybrid Kinetic Motors.
ENLARGE
Giorgetto Giugiaro said a $500 million contract with HK Motors is the biggest order won by the design house.
Previous ties
Hybrid Kinetic Motors chose Italdesign because Yeung, the venture's founder and chairman, previously had worked with the Italian consulting company when he was chairman of Brilliance, BMW AG's partner in China. Yeung hired Italdesign to design and engineer the Zhonghua sedan, which was introduced in 2001.
Yeung later was ousted from Brilliance in a dispute with the Chinese government and moved to America.
Last year, FEV Motorentechnick GmbH, of Aachen, Germany, started engineering work on a hybrid powertrain for Hybrid Kinetic Motors. The powertrain is said to be based on a 1.5-liter turbocharged engine that runs on either gasoline or compressed natural gas.
“The $250 million contract with FEV will provide us the entire hybrid powertrain for all our vehicles,” Hybrid Kinetic Motors CEO Chuantao **** told Automotive News.
ENLARGE
Hybrid Kinetics Chairman Yung Benjamin Yeung.
'Ambitious'
Half of the 6 million hybrid vehicles that Hybrid Kinetic Motors plans to build annually by 2018 will come from three U.S. plants and half from another three plants in China, with the $20 billion investment split evenly, said Vice Chairman Charles Huang.
“Today our forecasts are called ambitious, but in five years' time, everyone will accuse us of having underestimated global demand for really green vehicles,” Huang said.
The Chinese-American venture is financed with private money raised in China. The company has solicited investors on the promise of both launching a new-car venture and obtaining something attractive to many rich Chinese: an American visa.
Green cards for investors
The project is attracting investors through a special U.S. visa program called EB-5. That program, created in 1990, encourages wealthy foreigners to invest in the United States. A commercial investment of $1 million, or $500,000 if made in an economically distressed area such as Baldwin County, Ala., qualifies a foreign family for a permanent-resident green card.
“Our investment in Alabama creates the potential” for backers to qualify for 15,723 EB-5 visas, thus allowing the company to raise as much as $7.8 billion, Huang said.
The initial Alabama plant is to begin production in 2013. The startup's ambitious plans call for 6,000 employees to make 300,000 vehicles that first year, all of them sold under the Hybrid Kinetic Motors brand.
This first step -- worth $1.53 billion, said Huang -- would give Hybrid Kinetic one of the largest auto plants in the United States.
1 million units a year
Expanding the Alabama plant to 1 million units a year would increase the investment to $4.3 billion and the work force to 18,700 people, Huang said.
A second U.S. plant would be in Georgia, but Huang said the company has not decided whether to build a new, greenfield factory as it is doing in Alabama or convert an existing factory.
Hybrid Kinetic Motors is negotiating with unidentified potential states that could house the eventual third U.S. factory.
The outsized proposals have met with some skepticism and confusion. Chinese media have carried government comments that appeared to cast aspersions on Yeung's credentials as an automotive executive. Yeung, formerly known as Yang Rong, fled from China with his family for unknown reasons in 2002 and settled in Los Angeles.
Last year, some of Yeung's associates in the venture broke away and began pursuing a rival project with Mississippi authorities, triggering a lawsuit by Yeung.
But Robert Ingram, president of Baldwin County, Ala.'s, Economic Development Alliance, said Yeung's project continues to move forward.
‘Doing all the right things'
“They are doing all the right things,” Ingram said. “We are doing our due diligence, but they are spending their own money to do all the necessary preliminary things.”
At Hybrid Kinetic's request, the county has obtained options for an auto plant site in Bay Minette, Ingram said. The venture is negotiating a formal project agreement with the state of Alabama that would involve the same sort of public incentives that the state has provided over the past 15 years to projects by Hyundai Motor Corp. in Montgomery, Mercedes-Benz U.S. International Inc. in Vance and Honda Motor Co. in Lincoln.
Ingram said the county could exercise its options for the auto plant site within six months.
“It's looking more and more like we could have a groundbreaking this year,” he said. “At some point, we expect to make a contribution to the project, just as we did for Hyundai and Honda and the others.”
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...#ixzz0dAqosuF0
Chinese-backed Ala. auto startup hires Italdesign Giugiaro
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- An ambitious Chinese-American automaking venture moved one step closer to reality today when it signed an agreement here with Italdesign Giugiaro to design and engineer models for U.S. production.
Hybrid Kinetic Motors Corp., of Pasadena, Calif., and the Italian engineering and design company formalized their contract in a public ceremony. Hybrid Kinetic Motors is spearheaded by the former CEO of China's Brilliance China Automotive, Yung Benjamin Yeung.
Italdesign said it will design eight vehicles for the venture, which plans to start by building 300,000 units in 2013 in a new factory in Bay Minette, Ala., that has yet to be built. The automaking venture says it aims to spend $20 billion to build 6 million vehicles a year by 2018.
Italdesign Chairman Giorgetto Giugiaro said the $500 million contract with Hybrid Kinetic Motors is by far the biggest order won by the design house in its 42-year history.
Last September, Hybrid Kinetic Motors announced plans for a manufacturing plant in Baldwin County, home to Bay Minette, northeast of Mobile, Ala.
Giugiaro said his company will design sedans, crossovers, SUVs, minivans and light commercial vehicles for Hybrid Kinetic Motors.
ENLARGE
Giorgetto Giugiaro said a $500 million contract with HK Motors is the biggest order won by the design house.
Previous ties
Hybrid Kinetic Motors chose Italdesign because Yeung, the venture's founder and chairman, previously had worked with the Italian consulting company when he was chairman of Brilliance, BMW AG's partner in China. Yeung hired Italdesign to design and engineer the Zhonghua sedan, which was introduced in 2001.
Yeung later was ousted from Brilliance in a dispute with the Chinese government and moved to America.
Last year, FEV Motorentechnick GmbH, of Aachen, Germany, started engineering work on a hybrid powertrain for Hybrid Kinetic Motors. The powertrain is said to be based on a 1.5-liter turbocharged engine that runs on either gasoline or compressed natural gas.
“The $250 million contract with FEV will provide us the entire hybrid powertrain for all our vehicles,” Hybrid Kinetic Motors CEO Chuantao **** told Automotive News.
ENLARGE
Hybrid Kinetics Chairman Yung Benjamin Yeung.
'Ambitious'
Half of the 6 million hybrid vehicles that Hybrid Kinetic Motors plans to build annually by 2018 will come from three U.S. plants and half from another three plants in China, with the $20 billion investment split evenly, said Vice Chairman Charles Huang.
“Today our forecasts are called ambitious, but in five years' time, everyone will accuse us of having underestimated global demand for really green vehicles,” Huang said.
The Chinese-American venture is financed with private money raised in China. The company has solicited investors on the promise of both launching a new-car venture and obtaining something attractive to many rich Chinese: an American visa.
Green cards for investors
The project is attracting investors through a special U.S. visa program called EB-5. That program, created in 1990, encourages wealthy foreigners to invest in the United States. A commercial investment of $1 million, or $500,000 if made in an economically distressed area such as Baldwin County, Ala., qualifies a foreign family for a permanent-resident green card.
“Our investment in Alabama creates the potential” for backers to qualify for 15,723 EB-5 visas, thus allowing the company to raise as much as $7.8 billion, Huang said.
The initial Alabama plant is to begin production in 2013. The startup's ambitious plans call for 6,000 employees to make 300,000 vehicles that first year, all of them sold under the Hybrid Kinetic Motors brand.
This first step -- worth $1.53 billion, said Huang -- would give Hybrid Kinetic one of the largest auto plants in the United States.
1 million units a year
Expanding the Alabama plant to 1 million units a year would increase the investment to $4.3 billion and the work force to 18,700 people, Huang said.
A second U.S. plant would be in Georgia, but Huang said the company has not decided whether to build a new, greenfield factory as it is doing in Alabama or convert an existing factory.
Hybrid Kinetic Motors is negotiating with unidentified potential states that could house the eventual third U.S. factory.
The outsized proposals have met with some skepticism and confusion. Chinese media have carried government comments that appeared to cast aspersions on Yeung's credentials as an automotive executive. Yeung, formerly known as Yang Rong, fled from China with his family for unknown reasons in 2002 and settled in Los Angeles.
Last year, some of Yeung's associates in the venture broke away and began pursuing a rival project with Mississippi authorities, triggering a lawsuit by Yeung.
But Robert Ingram, president of Baldwin County, Ala.'s, Economic Development Alliance, said Yeung's project continues to move forward.
‘Doing all the right things'
“They are doing all the right things,” Ingram said. “We are doing our due diligence, but they are spending their own money to do all the necessary preliminary things.”
At Hybrid Kinetic's request, the county has obtained options for an auto plant site in Bay Minette, Ingram said. The venture is negotiating a formal project agreement with the state of Alabama that would involve the same sort of public incentives that the state has provided over the past 15 years to projects by Hyundai Motor Corp. in Montgomery, Mercedes-Benz U.S. International Inc. in Vance and Honda Motor Co. in Lincoln.
Ingram said the county could exercise its options for the auto plant site within six months.
“It's looking more and more like we could have a groundbreaking this year,” he said. “At some point, we expect to make a contribution to the project, just as we did for Hyundai and Honda and the others.”
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...#ixzz0dAqosuF0
01-20-10, 09:45 AM
#2
Lexus Connoisseur
Oh boy...now we're gonna see a version of this...
Just like BYD with the Corolla:
Just like BYD with the Corolla:
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
JessePS
Car Chat
5
01-26-17 03:13 AM
