Short torque

Chinese firm to repair AMT vehicles

Great Wall Motors Co Ltd is set to recall 8,908 automated manual transmission cars from Dec 1. The cars, which were produced between June 25, 2010, and February 23, 2012, can suddenly lose power during driving because of problems with clutch controllers. The automaker will replace problematic controllers free of charge.

Toyota issues recall over air bags

Toyota Motor Corp said on Wednesday it will recall 5.8 million vehicles globally that are equipped with faulty air bags manufactured by Takata Corp.

The air bags lack a drying agent to prevent the buildup of moisture, a problem that has been blamed for air-bag explosions that spray shrapnel into vehicle cabins, which has been linked to numerous deaths and more than 100 injuries globally.

The recall will include 1.16 million vehicles in Japan, 1.47 million in Europe and 820,000 in China produced between April 2006 and December 2014, Toyota said in an emailed statement. As part of the latest recall, Toyota will install air bags that have the drying agent.

New gearboxes mainly from intl businesses

International automatic gearbox producers are dominating the Chinese car market, according to the Economic Information Daily newspaper. It reported that carmakers in China spend 30 billion yuan ($4.42 billion) to 50 billion yuan each year to purchase automatic gearboxes from major international brands ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Aisin Seiki Co Ltd and BorgWarner Inc. Chinese brands contribute around 500,000 automatic gearboxes each year in the Chinese market, accounting for some 5 percent of the total number.

China sold 21 million passenger cars in 2015, around half of them sporting automatic gearboxes. Wang Shengtang, honorary president of the China Gear Manufacturers Association, said the domestic sector remains in the early stages of development.

Beijing license lottery limit to be reduced

Residents in Beijing will find it more difficult to get a car license plate as the city moves to combat traffic jams. The Beijing transport commission said it will slash the current quota of 150,000 license plates each year to 100,000 annually from 2018 to 2020.

The move is to ensure the total number of cars in Beijing remains less than 63 million by the end of the decade, said Zhou Zhengyu, director of the municipal commission of transportation.

Beijing introduced a lottery system to win car license plates in late 2010. Statistics show that 13,600 of 2.69 million individual candidates won license plates in the bi-monthly draw in October.

Complaints website releases Q3 statistics

Accessories and electronic systems received the most car-related complaints in the third quarter of the year, according to a website that amasses and assesses auto quality complaints in China.

Statistics from the website, 12365auto.com, show that 5,300 of the 10,926 complaints it received from July to September were related to accessories and electronic systems. These were followed by 3,341 complaints about engines and 2,999 about transmissions.

Chinese brands received the most complaints with 3,888 in the third quarter, trailing those from the United States with 3,431 and Germany with 949. Japanese cars received 826 complaints while South Korean brands had only 282, the least of all brands.

Motoring-agencies

(China Daily 10/31/2016 page18)