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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2008
30
General Motors will invest
$445 million in diesel
in Thailand
In the aftermath of some of the
largest quarterly losses in its history,
General Motors on 13
th
August
announced it is going to invest nearly
a half-billion dollars in a new diesel
plant in Thailand.
The No 1 American car maker said
it is putting its money into the Thai
plant to be sure of meeting growing
demand in the Asian market in a
period of contraction in the domestic
market. North American car sales
were down 20% in the second
quarter.
Although much of Asia remains
the province of Toyota and other
Japanese producers, by its own
reckoning General Motors has
increased its market share there
from 5.9% to nearly 7% over the last
three years. Thailand in particular has
been lucky for the company.
GM benefited for a decade from its
now defunct partnership with the
Japanese truck maker Isuzu, which
provided engines to the US company
and offered access to local suppliers.
Brian White, an Oklahoma-based
business consultant who has
covered ‘Fortune 500’ companies for
six years, observed that GM’s growth
outside the US “can’t come soon
enough.”
Mr White wrote, “[The company’s
Thailand move] comes as it has made
a decent profit in its European, Latin
American, African and Middle East
regions. Together, those sections of
the world gave GM a combined $465
million gain in the most recent quarter,
while the auto maker lost $9.3 billion in
North America.” (bloggingstocks.com,
13
th
August).
Thailand has become a hub for car
manufacturers serving South-East
Asia, Australia and the Middle East,
and is now Asia’s third-largest car
exporter after Japan and South
Korea.
The GM pattern is similar to that
❖
of Ford Motor Company, which
reported a loss of $1.3 billion in
the second quarter of 2008 in
North America, compared with
profit of $388 million in South
America, $582 million in Europe,
and $153 million in Asia and
Africa.
Ford has said it will make an
investment of $1.5 billion to
expand manufacturing capacity
in Thailand, China and India.
In other news of GM, even as
❖
Detroit auto makers pressed for
$25 billion in US government
loans to support the develop-
ment of advanced-technology
vehicles, the company’s chief
executive Rick Wagoner on
17
th
September declined to
guarantee that the auto giant
would
use
American-made
batteries in its new electric-
powered car, the Chevrolet
Volt. During a morning round
table discussion with reporters
and editors in Washington,
before
joining
Ford
and
Chrysler executives on visits to
congressional leaders to lobby
for approval of the loan package,
the GM chief said it was likely
that “at least initially” the sub-
components for the batteries
will come from other parts of
the world.
Mr Wagoner said that US
battery making capability trails
development in Asia, where
government policy has long
supported the technology.
LG Chem, a South Korean
chemical company with a
subsidiary in Troy, Michigan, is
believed to be a top contender
to supply batteries for the Volt.
Telecommunications
T-Mobile’s Android phone
paves Google’s way onto
a broad range of handsets
T-Mobile has
introduced
the
first
mobile
phone
running
Android software from Google.
Writing in InformationWeek (16
th
September),
Thomas
Claburn
observed that the arrival of the
‘Dream’ handset from Taiwan’s
HTC – “after months of anticipation
among technophiles” – promises
to reinvigorate the smartphone
market and to provide a mobile