Beijing brand cars to enter market by end of 2011, BAIC says

The Beijing Auto Holding Company, a brand new financing platform for the development of Chinese Beijing brand passenger cars, will be officially be established in 2011 and is expected to produce and sell cars in the market in about two years.

Han Yonggui, vice general manager and spokesman of the Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company, said on Sept. 26 that more than 20 models of Beijing brand passenger cars will be introduced one after another in the next five years, covering the manufacture of all types of cars, including the A0-class and C-class, light and heavy off-road vehicles and cross passenger cars.

Furthermore, the first passenger car model to adopt Saab's technology is expected to be officially introduced at the end of 2011.

New-energy vehicles are an important part of the 12th Five-Year Plan of the Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company. Han revealed that a total of 1,000 new-energy sanitation vehicles and 50 purely electric buses produced by the Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company will be put into operation in 2010.

In addition, 30 purely electric cars reconstructed based on Saab's technology were completed. The company will achieve mass production of new-energy vehicles in 2011, and its output is expected to reach 150,000 units per year in 2015.

The Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company plans to achieve the goal of producing and marketing 3 million to 3.5 million vehicles in 2015 and will strive to achieve the capacity of 700,000 Beijing brand passenger cars per year in order to enter the top-class of domestic brand auto manufacturers, according to the 12th Five-Year Plan of the Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company

The Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company has continued to develop and produce a number of Beijing brand passenger cars since the first local brand car, the Jinggangshan, was completed on June 20, 1958.

However, production was soon stopped because of backward technology and incomplete production equipment. Afterward, the company continued to independently develop the SUV BJ212 and BJ130 light trucks, but there is still a gap in the program of passenger cars.