General Motors Corp will sell its first gas-electric hybrid cars in China in July, introducing a model created in part by GM’s Shanghai design center, the company said yesterday.
The Buick LaCrosse will be the second hybrid to enter the Chinese automobile market following Toyota Motor Corp’s Prius in early 2006.
The LaCrosse was expected to be unveiled today at the Beijing auto show, GM managers said. They said it would be priced under 300,000 yuan (US$43,000) — comparable to the Prius.
“We don’t expect to see a very high volume of sales of this car in China in a short period of time. But we bring this technology to help China support sustainable growth and bring consumers in that direction,” Joseph Liu (劉曰海), GM China’s vice president for sales, told reporters.
The car was developed with contributions from GM’s Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center in Shanghai, said Maryann Combs, president of the center.
Hybrids improve fuel efficiency and cut emissions by generating extra power from the brakes as a vehicle tops. But they also cost more because they require both gasoline and electric motors.
GM said the LaCrosse would be the first hybrid made in China. The Prius is assembled from imported parts.
Toyota has sold about 2,500 Priuses in China since 2006 but sales are slowing in part because Chinese drivers are unfamiliar with hybrids, reports in the industry press said.
GM has made China, the world’s second-biggest and fastest-growing vehicle market, a key part of its efforts to develop alternative power sources. It announced plans in October for a US$250 million fuel research center in Shanghai.
Chairman Rick Wagoner took part yesterday in the opening of an automotive energy research center partly financed by GM at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the alma mater of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
GM says it sold just over 1 million vehicles in China last year.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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