Gasgoo.com (Shanghai April 28) - Toyota's joint venture partner GAC Group, announced that it will increase production of new energy vehicles to 200,000, the Beijing Times reported today. The announcement, made at the ongoing Auto Shanghai 2011, was accompanied by news that GAC will begin production of a pure electric version Trumpchi by the end of this year.
Zhang Fangyou, executive director of GAC Group, said that by the end of the Twelfth Five-Year Guideline (a national economic directive period lasting until 2015), GAC will achieve the new 200,000 electric vehicle production target, as well as create a new Chinese engineering lab (codenamed "2531), that will be able to do its own car control, engine manufacture, battery management and composition technology work.
President Zeng Qinghong was confident that the manufacturer could meet the relatively lofty production goal, which not only includes pure electric vehicles but also hybrids and other energy efficient vehicles. Huang Xiangdong, head of GAC's research department, said that developing new energy and other energy efficient vehicles is only a matter of taking existing vehicle knowledge and converting it to electric form.
