2023-09-28 17:22:48
This information has not yet been officially confirmed, but it is reported that the Japanese company Mitsubishi Motors has begun the negotiation process with the Chinese concern GAC (Guangzhou Automobile Group) regarding withdrawing from the joint venture, which has been operating since 2012. It includes GAC itself (it owns 50% of the shares), automaker Mitsubishi Motors (30%) and the parent Japanese concern Mitsubishi Corporation (20%). Production at the only plant in Hunan province was stopped back in March (since the beginning of the year, only 3,367 cars were produced), and some of the staff were laid off.
According to a Japanese business publication Nikkei, things are really not going well for Mitsubishi in the Middle Kingdom: if 140 thousand cars were sold in 2018, then the result for 2022 is only 38 thousand units. The reason for this decline is quite prosaic: Mitsubishi’s lineup is too conservative for the Chinese market, where demand is shifting to electric models. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, approximately 26.9 million new cars were sold in the country over the whole of last year, of which regarding 5.03 million were electric (regarding 80% more than a year earlier): their share was regarding 18.8%. . And in the first half of this year, Chinese customers purchased 2.55 million battery-powered cars, which is 31.1% more than in the same period in 2022.
Mitsubishi offers six models (five crossovers and one pickup) on the Chinese market. There is only one electric car in the range – the Mitsubishi Airtrek SUV (in the illustrations), but even that was converted from the Chinese Aion V model. The Japanese company simply does not have its own battery models now. The rear-wheel drive Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which they even once tried to sell in Russia, has long been discontinued, and the Mitsubishi eK X EV kei car was developed in collaboration with Nissan and is sold only in Japan. The rechargeable hybrid Outlander PHEV, alas, might not save the company’s position in China.
It is reported that the GAC-Mitsubishi plant will soon be repurposed for the production of electric vehicles of the Chinese concern GAC, and the Japanese automaker itself will reorient itself to other markets in Southeast Asia and Oceania. By the way, Mitsubishi was not the first Japanese company to leave the Chinese automobile market: back in 2018, Suzuki left there for the same reason.
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