Honda Motor Company has announced its intentions to establish a dedicated test track to further aid its research and development (R&D) efforts conducted by the Bangkok-based Honda R&D Asia Pacific (HRAP) arm. Said facility will be constructed to the tune of 1.7 billion baht (RM207,738,388) and will eventually sit on an 80-hectare land area in the Rojana Industrial Park in the Prachin Buri province in Thailand.
When completed in 2017, the facility will enable Honda to test its development mules under “various aspects on different kind of tracks which simulate real road conditions and terrains in different parts of the world.” Aside from four-wheeled vehicles, the track will also be used by Honda to test its motorcycles and other power products, as well. It will be the second facility of its kind outside of Japan, after the US.
“Honda places the highest importance on research and development. This new test course will contribute to the ability to develop attractive and affordable vehicles for our customers in this region much faster and more effectively,” commented Fumihiko Ike, chairman and representative director of Honda.
“We must reinforce our product lineup and the enhancement of our R&D activities will be even more important for that. Honda is committed to making its products more competitive for both the Thai market and for the world, with Thai local component parts and infrastructure, with Thai R&D facilities, and with Thai engineers,” added Noriaki Abe, president and CEO of Asian Honda Motor.
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Yet another blow to Malaysians and a few thousand or maybe tens of thousands jobs are lost because our Ministers believe in crony practice.
Malaysians have already suffered so much. For 30 years, 30 million people suffer so much. We struggle paying for our high car prices all because of one man’s dream of benefiting his friends and relatives through the AP system and the government protecting Proton.
Malaysia was on its way to becoming the Detroit of Asia in the 90s. But the AP system cost us hundreds of billions in ringgit in investments from car companies who moved to Thailand and Indonesia. Car companies got fed up with Malaysia’s MITI for protecting Proton and telling other companies what to price their cars. They got sick and tired of the AP system and how genuine brands cannot get enough APs to import their cars in (like Mercedes, BMW and Honda).
They thought that if they set up their brands and plants in Malaysia, they knew they had to share the pool of APs with the cronies and they knew 90% of all APs go to the cronies. They all moved their operations to Thailand making it the AutoCity of the world.
Recently GM announced that they rolled out already 1 million cars from Thailand. Imagine if GM was in Malaysia and we taxed GM RM10,000 per car. Calculate that with 1 million cars. Just from GM alone, we lost Billions in USD. Imagine what will the amount be from other car companies if they had set up in Malaysia?
Because of Mahathir and his AP system, as well as Proton, we lost hundreds of billion of ringgit in investment and trillions of ringgit from jobs lost. If Malaysia was the autocity of Asia, hundreds of thousands of jobs would have been created for Malaysians. We lost all that. Trillions of Ringgit and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Now, Thailand is benefiting from this trillions lost.
So, in summary, the 30 PEKEMA AP members and Proton have solely caused Malaysia to lose trillions in investments.
A word of caution to the idiots at MAI and the idiots in MITI, Malaysia might even lose existing companies who are already CKDing in Malaysia. BMW, Mercedes, Nissan, Honda and Toyota might even close up their plants in Malaysia to open up in Thailand.
This is so worrisome. Despite Thailand having an unstable economy with riots and bombing, no stable government, yet car companies still prefer Thailand to Malaysia. Makes us wonder…..what is wrong with Malaysia?
For a junk car maker to survive, generations of Malaysian and national economy suffer.
tldr
Tahniah Thai !!!!
Malaysia not enuff manpower kot…..
even at KLIA foreigner working, now even want to import English teachers from India……