As Infiniti and Acura announced Chinese-made plan, Lexus, the Japanese luxury car brand which earliest entered Chinese market, began to take action. Recently, it was said that GAC has been always making long-term and deep research of Lexus’s Chinese-made plan and also negotiating with Toyota the possibility and concrete operation means. Meanwhile, Jiang Jizhe, Lexus newly appointed Executive Vice President, also stated in the recent interview that it was a hot topic for Lexus to realize localization in China.
Before, Lexus had set up several limitations on the Chinese-made topic, which said the sales must reach Ns thousand vehicles. Although the limitations had been easily surpassed, Lexus repeatedly went back on its words.
In a last year’s interview of Lexus, Lexus senior vice president Kenji Nakashima exposed the biggest concern about Chinese-made plan: China may still lack the technique of producing Lexus. He repeatedly emphasized Lexus’s “Quality of Craftsman”:“In Lexus workshop at Kyushu, Japan, we keep a primitive cycle. The sophisticated craftsmen strike the car with hammer, touch the car with hands and hear with ears, which we call the working mean of ‘Craftsman System’. We believe that no machine can replace the craftsmen with abundant experiences and sophisticated skills.” In an earlier interview, Toyota research senior manager ever pointed that there was technical difficulties for Lexus to be produced in China, including operation of core technique, supply of core parts, etc.
If Lexus realizes localization in China, it will not be worthy to set up a new production base. Actually, from the perspective of practicality and efficiency, the newly-built GAC-Toyota will be the best choice, which may better solve Lexus’s insistence of “Craftsman Technique ”.
