Geely sets pace for China's homegrown brands

Global Times - At 10 am on December 12, 2012, a new record for China's homegrown auto brands has been made in the assembly shop of Geely's Hangzhou Bay Production Base as a freshly assembled and tested Emgrand EC7 wheeled through the GATE OF THE QUALITY. The Emgrand has achieved a sales volume of over 300,000 units fueled by the excellent performance delivered by the EC7 in only three years and five months.

Chen Shihua, Director of Information Department of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) announced, "Geely Emgrand sold 143,098 units from January to November of 2012 according to the statistics released by CAAM. Both the sales in November alone and the cumulative sales of the eleven months spearheaded China-based middle-class auto brands. With its distinctive quality, safety, technology and service, Emgrand has become nonesuch middle-class auto brand in China.

The EC7, which is developed by Geely on an independent basis and orientated to the European and American markets, is a symbol of the automaker's strategy transition and brand enhancing. As the first B-class model (large family car) created by Geely, the EC7 has become the only Chinese car which has concurrently gained C-NCAP five-star safety rating and EURO-NCAP four-star safety rating, which is valued as the milestone in the history of automotive safety in China.

Li Weijing, Director of Department of General Affairs of the China Automotive Technology & Research Centre said, "Geely's safety performance was impressive in C-NCAP crash tests. It has made great improvement in quality. Among all the homegrown brands, it owns the most five-star models and highest rating." Since 2008, the Group has had five brands winning five-star rating, namely, the New Vision, Panda, Emgrand EC7, Emgrand EC8 and Gleagle GX7, among which the GX7 scored 50.3 and acquired five- plus stars in a C-NCAP test. It is the best performance that a China's homegrown brand has ever attained.

Hangzhou Bay Production Base, one of the eight bases that Geely have built nationwide, is worth of total investment of 2.9 billion yuan. It was initiated on April 11, 2011, engaging in production of the Emgrand EC7 and EC7-RV. According to Feng Qingfeng, Vice President of the Group, the Base has introduced many advanced facilities and state-of-the-art technology from abroad. For the first time in stamping workshop that ABB's Dynamic Drive Chain (DDC) technology is employed, with the target of building "auto manufacturing works of global competitiveness". The base has guaranteed the quality through benchmarking management and quality control and now has gained an annual capacity of 120,000 units.

According to the 2012 China Automobile After-sales Customer Satisfaction (CAACS) report issued on December 12, Emgrand was hailed as champion among homegrown brands with a score of 849. CAACS was co-conducted by LANSION together with China Association for Quality (CAQ), China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) and China Association of Environmental Protection Industry (CAEPI). The investigation lasted for 3 months and contained 6460 samples, which had to undergo strict tests and evaluation on their three-tier systems. Emgrand was ranked number 8 on last year's list.

Yang Xueliang, Chief Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Geely, told the reporter that 423,000 cars were sold under the three brands by the end of November. 480,000 cars are expected to manufacture and sell, a 15-percent rise over the previous year. The year 2012 has seen an export volume of 100,000 cars, up 200 percent over year ago. Among the cars sold overseas, models offered by Emgrand have amounted to 35,000 units, accounting for more than 40 percent of the exportation.