Authorities in China have granted a licence to BMW, which allows the Bavarian carmaker to export vehicles built by its local joint venture BMW Brilliance. This opens up the possibility for China-made BMWs to make their way to customers in other markets such as Europe and the United States, as reported by Automotive News.
“We have an export licence for the joint venture but so far we haven’t decided on exports since we need the production for the local market,” said Olaf Kastner, head of BMW in China. Quality concerns have been associated with cars from China, but BMW now believes the quality of its cars made in China has reached the level of those built in Germany or the US.
Last year, BMW built over 300,000 vehicles at its two Chinese facilities located in Dadong and Tiexi, where it makes models such as the 1 Series Sedan, 2 Series Active Tourer, 3 Series, 5 Series and X1 (the X3 will be added in the future). The former certainly appears to be most sensible model to be exported, but Kastner has stated that BMW no plans to do so since “everything is still being absorbed” locally.
Another carmaker that is also a recipient of the export licence is Volvo, which is the first to export China-built cars to Europe and the US with models like the S60L and more recently, the S90. The Swedish marque is firmly rooted in China, with plans to build its first fully electric car in the country, which will be exported globally.
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Day by day, BMWs are just getting more and more undesirable…
BMW of Asia more desirable…
Volvo China?
Amazing. China is so proactive and very focused in what they do. They know giving BMW this would benefit BOTH China and BMW.
Unfortunately, in our country, lots of politics involved. Then we ask the car companies to give free 30% of the local entity set up. To make matters worse, the chairman of this entity also must be ex gomen servant who will get free goyang kaki job, no need to go office, just attend AGM only.
This is why Malaysia lost out being the Detroit of Asia.
Detroit of Asia? Can elaborate?
Kunta rakyat jatidiri yg paling patriotik.
Tak kritik maka tak cinta .
Kritikan yg berasaskan fakta & idea pembaharuan , bermanfaat.
Kritikan dari gua pulak, syiok sendri je.
Nothing to shout about. Bolehlnd oso got assemblers what
Not surprising. Good move by Gov. It’s only a matter of time China made cars gets to the market globally. Build quality will be taken very seriously even on the GOV level as China will be keen to wipe out that bad reputation.
I saw this Volvo advertisement in the local newspaper with a statement – “made in Sweden”. We don’t see that kind of a statement with other cars. That pretty much shows customer confidence and sensitivity to the place of manufacturing rather than the company that manufactures it.
Sadly Made in Malaysia elicits laughter following events like mh370 (more about how our government bungled through it), the 1mdb money trail fallout, our harboring of terrorists and well known instigators, being arm twisted by north korea and so on.
If u wanna talk about politiks, this is not the place. Getoutdahere!
Nowadays, its common to ask the question – “Is it Made in China” when U buy any goods.
When Geely decided to Merry with P1, we are already expecting Made in China Proton.
What I cannot Fathom is Made in China BMW. Looks like China is doing a Japanese style of conquering the world with its economic prowess of One Belt One Road when they are exporting Volvo & now BMW to the rest of the world.
What so special. We are exporting Proton to the rest of the world too.
A lot of Electronics device we using now days is made in china, as long warranty is there, and price is trying to
affordable or compete with other car maker, Im OK with it.
to be honest…electronics are still pretty unreliable…its just that they go out of date so quickly we are not aware how poorly made they are
What are u typing ur comments on eh?
a crappy made in china lenovo