General Motors Co (GM), which has been seeking to fix its ailing European operations, believes a crucial partnership in France would survive even if the French partner ties up with China’s Dongfeng Motor Group Co Ltd (東風汽車), a top GM executive said on Friday.
Reuters reported in June that the founding family of PSA Peugeot Citroen had offered to give up control of the automaker as it tried to revive plans for a closer tie-up with GM backed by a fresh capital injection.
“We’re not PSA’s only partner ... so I don’t think it would complicate our situation any more than it would complicate some of their other partners,” GM vice chairman Steve Girsky said in an interview in New York, referring to a possible partnership between Peugeot and Dongfeng.
He acknowledged that the impact of such a tie-up on GM’s alliance with Peugeot would depend on how much influence Dongfeng had.
He said another factor would be whether any vehicles in such a partnership would be sold in China, where GM’s joint venture partner is SAIC Motor Corp (上海汽車).
Peugeot had also held inconclusive discussions about selling a stake to a Dongfeng-led consortium, sources said in June.
GM has so far refused to invest more money in Peugeot, a stance Girsky reaffirmed on Friday. GM is Peugeot’s second-largest shareholder, behind the Peugeot family.
“We bought our 7 percent in the first place not because we wanted significant influence in PSA, but because we wanted to help them with their capital raise at the time,” he said.
Girsky said Peugeot has not raised the issue with GM and he declined to say whether the US automaker would be willing to have its stake in PSA diluted.
“We haven’t had discussions. We don’t know what they’re going to do, and when they decide what they’re going to do, they’ll pick up the phone and call us,” Girsky said.
Girsky said fixing GM’s European operations is the priority and the alliance with Peugeot is meant to help.
GM and PSA are still working together to build two minivan-like vehicles on the same vehicle platforms, starting in 2016, but other unidentified products largely for the European markets are also being discussed, he said.
GM’s money-losing European unit has been a key focus for investors since the automaker went public in the fall of 2010 following a bankruptcy reorganization and a US$49.5 billion US government bailout.
In November 2011, chief executive Dan Akerson charged Girsky with overhauling the European operations, which have suffered 13 straight years of losses.
Girsky said the European automotive market, which hit 20-year lows earlier this year, has bottomed out, but GM is not expecting a huge industry volume recovery in the next year or two.
GM has taken costs out of its struggling Opel unit in Europe and made the commitment to spend US$5.2 billion on the business by the end of 2016 to launch new models.
Now, GM needs to focus on making the brand stronger, and Girsky said Opel was on pace for the first time in 15 years to avoid losing market share in the region.
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six