Short Torque

Ride-hailing service providers fined

Shanghai authorities have fined ride-hailing service providers Didi Chuxing and Meituan Dianping for using unlicensed vehicles and warned their smartphone applications could be suspended if they continue to fail to meet standards. Shanghai's transportation and communications authorities have fined Didi 200,000 yuan ($28,400) for providing services with unlicensed vehicles, the Shanghai transportation commission said on Tuesday. The authorities had also fined Meituan Dianping 30,000 yuan, following a 1.47 million yuan penalty last month. Local government data showed around 80 percent of unlicensed vehicles spotted by the latest assessment were hired by Didi and more than 15 percent were hired by Meituan Dianping in the past three days, the commission said.

Honda Argentina to cease production

Japan's Honda Motor said on Tuesday it will stop producing automobiles in Argentina next year as part of a global shift in how it shares production between regions. Honda said its Campana plant in the province of Buenos Aires, which produces the HR-V model, will focus solely on making motorcycles. Honda said in a statement the decision was part of a global reorganization of auto production and was unrelated to the results of the primary elections in Argentina on Sunday. Around 1,000 employees work at Honda Argentina, and the company is in talks with the local union to offer a buyout for the employees involved in the auto production, the company said.

Mercedes outsells rivals in July

Mercedes-Benz registered a 13 percent sales increase in China in July, outselling BMW and Audi in the first seven months of the year. Last month, Mercedes-Benz delivered more than 59,000 vehicles in China. The tally pushed the brand's cumulative China sales through July to 404,092, Daimler said. July deliveries for BMW rose 16 percent to 51,377. BMW and MINI-branded vehicles combined sold 404,023 during the period, up 17 percent from a year earlier. FAW-Volkswagen, VW's joint venture with China FAW Group Corp which markets locally produced and imported Audi cars, had increased sales by 6.1 percent to 56,233 in July. Through July, Audi's local deliveries surged 27 percent to 368,094.

SAIC starts work on cloud computing

China's SAIC Motor Corp on Wednesday started building a cloud computing and big data center in Zhengzhou, capital of Central China's Henan province. With an investment of 2 billion yuan ($284 million), the center will be SAIC Motor's third and largest database in China when construction is completed. The 20,000 servers in the center are expected to provide support for product R&D and intelligent manufacturing, after-sales service, internal control and management, as well as cloud computing and services. SAIC's production base in Zhengzhou went into operation in 2017 with an annual output of 300,000 passenger vehicles.

Japanese car sales fall in South Korea

Japanese car sales in South Korea posted a double-digit fall last month amid the trade dispute between Seoul and Tokyo, a government report showed Thursday. The number of Japanese vehicles sold there was 2,674 in July, down 17.2 percent from a year earlier, according to South Korea's ministry of trade, industry and energy. From the previous month, the figure tumbled 32.2 percent. It came as Japan tightened regulations last month on its exports to South Korea of three materials crucial for the production of memory chips and display panels. Japan removed South Korea earlier this month from its whitelist of trusted trading partners that are given preferential export procedure. In response, South Korea also dropped Japan off its whitelist of trusted export partners.

Motoring - Agencies

(China Daily 08/19/2019 page19)