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...One company that has been hit by the rise of Chinese rivals is Volkswagen, whose flagship VW brand was this year dethroned as China’s best-selling car by BYD....
...Government procurement guidelines mean state bodies, which include hospitals, must increasingly buy from Chinese brands. “China for China” also involves localising supply chains....
...The VW group, which includes brands such as Audi and Porsche, sells more cars overall than any other manufacturer in China, but in the fast-growing and potentially lucrative EV market, the VW brand trails...
...Renault’s Dacia brand this week announced that its Spring budget EV, which is imported from China, would be sold for under £15,000 in the UK....
...The carmaker last year warned that luxury brands were not immune to subdued spending by consumers, as it flagged that it would continue trying to sell more expensive cars in China amid lower sales....
...German executives fear potential retaliation from Beijing and Chinese consumers at a time when local brands such as BYD have already been grabbing market share from western incumbents in the world’s largest...
...Last year, the VW brand was dethroned as China’s best-selling car by BYD....
...Punishment for companies caught up in geopolitical spats over human rights can be swift, as evidenced when brands such as H&M and Nike in 2021 were widely boycotted by Chinese consumers after they acquiesced...
...and its founders, and adversely affect the Porsche brand”....
...Their customer base has not grown far beyond the German carmakers as Chinese brands such as BYD have grown alongside their own local suppliers that specialise in batteries and software....
...The group, a fifth of which is owned by the German state of Lower Saxony, also produces the Porsche, Audi and Škoda brands....
...These have in the past boycotted brands that respond to reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang....
...act for many German companies such as VW, which depend on China for a large proportion of their profits and try to stay clear of upsetting Beijing or Chinese consumers, which have in the past boycotted brands...
...Its rival Schaeffler last month announced a bid for EV specialist Vitesco, which was spun out of Continental two years ago, arguing that the arrival of Chinese brands in Europe would spur the need for car...
...In the first nine months, the VW brand reported margins of 3.4 per cent....
...Premium brands such as Porsche are relatively rare exporters of cars to China....
...The company, which is behind brands such as Porsche and Audi, maintained its guidance that group sales in 2023 would be 10-15 per cent higher than the €279bn it reported last year....
...While Tesla is the best-selling EV brand in the Nordic country, the market is only the fifth-largest in Europe, behind Germany, the UK, France and Norway....
...“Everybody knows our brands, you do not have to create something which has a strange name in it.”...
...Its flagship VW car was recently dethroned by BYD as the best-selling brand in China....
...Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith’s amoral conman, should be persuasive in any guise....
...“A year ago we were beyond this and now we are back in that silly discussion about if electric mobility is really important,” said Thomas Ingenlath, chief executive of EV brand Polestar....
...Volkswagen has decided to replace the head of Audi, amid concerns that one of its most profitable brands is lagging behind rivals....
...On Wednesday, the company announced it would partner with Chinese rival Xpeng to jointly develop electric vehicles for the VW brand in the worlds largest car market....
...The sprawling German group, which other than its eponymous VW brand includes companies such as Porsche and Audi, was one of the first western companies to enter the Chinese market in the late 1970s and has...
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