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Jaguar and Land Rover Angle For Production In China
First time accepted submitter ourlovecanlastforeve writes "Those of you still hanging on to Jaguar and Land Rover as the last vestiges of the truly British automobile in the States may find yourselves grasping at straws as Chery announces a nearly two billion dollar joint effort with the auto brand to move production to Changsu in China." Anyone still hanging on to that idea might also be interested to learn that Jaguar and Land Rover are subsidiaries of India's Tata, maker of the low-priced Nano.
Tata Motors is a subsidiary of the Tata group. The latter is worth at least USD100B which makes it larger than BMW. The former and its subsidiaries also make everything from lorries, buses, and heavy lifting equipment to a number of other road cars besides the Nano. The Nano is in many ways considered a relative failure in India and it's their other cars which are more popular.
While export might be a possibility, the article clearly mentions that the Chinese domestic market alone demands 40000 imported JLR models which will very likely increase dramatically when they are produced locally and sold with cheaper price tags. A little googling would have also revealed that China is fast becoming the company's largest market and that JLR is expanding its factories in England and hiring more people.
If anybody needed an example of FUD, the OP would be an apt candidate.
Quillem : An India-centric mishmash of things.
China will give you the build quality you ask for. People go to China to build cheaply, so "cheap" is the most important parameter. Then they get all confused when "cheap" (cost) ends up being "cheap" (quality).
Very true, and this is not just for tech gadgets. Pretty much the entire astronomy industry is currently manufactured in China. Hell I've read Celestron is owned by a Chinese company. Celestron, Meade, Orion pretty much have all their equipment made in China, and to call any of their equipment unreliable or poor could not be further from the truth.
The problem with working with the Chinese is battling through the bullshit. One of our engineers tried to buy a valve from China one day. When he asked about certification documents, the company replied with something along the lines of, "What certification would you like us to fake for you?" in only slightly less obvious words. I had a similar experience with water filters. I've never seen a TUV certificate use numbers like 100% on anything, yet the certificate applied with this "TUV certified" filter was covered with 100% numbers. Yes it was cheap.
You get what you pay for. This applies to consumers and to businesses looking for a manufacturing plant, and China can supply both.