Changan Auto to sell 2 mln vehicles a year by '12

Shanghai, April 20 (Gasgoo.com) Chongqing Changan Automobile Co. aims to more than double its annual sales volume to two million units by the end of 2012, Dow Jones reported, citing Chairman Xu Liuping saying yesterday.

Half of those sales will be of mini vehicles with engines 1.3 liters and less, while 800,000 units will be of passenger cars, Xu said at a press briefing preceding today's auto show in Shanghai. The sales target is in line with the government's plan for China's auto industry to have four large auto manufacturers with a sales and production volume of two million units.

The Chinese automaker operates vehicle-manufacturing joint ventures with Ford Motor Co. and Mazda Motor Corp. Xu also said that, amid global turmoil in the auto industry, the company is "actively" looking for possibilities of mergers and acquisitions at home and abroad.

Chongqing Changan also plans to invest 20 billion yuan ($2.93 billion) by 2012 in an engine research and manufacturing base, the company said in a statement. It also plans to begin selling a hybrid vehicle to individual customers by the end of the third quarter, and aims to sell more than 10,000 hybrid vehicles over the next two years.

Changan's auto sales in the first quarter rose 13.2% from the same period a year ago to 307,000 units, Xu said. Sales of smaller vehicles rose more than 40%, he said. The company sold about 860,000 vehicles in 2008.