So this is basically a supplement to recently reported news here that Geely was getting together a quarter billion dollars to do something, and it denied that its aim was to buy Volvo.

Now, the current Volvo CEO, Stephen Odell, has also denied that Geely is interested in purchasing the beleaguered auto company.

This actually leaves Volvo in a pretty bad spot–it’s a money losing division inside a money losing company in a bad economy.  You add all these little results together and it looks more like someone’s just waiting for Volvo to bottom out so they can swing in and buy up all of Volvo’s assets for pennies on the dollar.

Considering the only other firm to even express an interest was Beijing Auto, and they were knocked out of the running way back in June, this doesn’t mean anything good for Volvo.

Tags: beijing, Beijing Auto, chinese car company, chinese cars, Geely, Geely Automotive, Volvo

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Transformers has been a hit ever since the first movie hit the bigscreen. Recently, Transformers 2 made its way to the market to what has been generally well reception.

This reception has led a mall in Beijing to promote the movie in a somewhat peculiar way. What you see above it said mall’s creation; a Transformer made completely from a Volkswagen Jetta.

To my knowledge, there are no Jetta based Transformers in the movie, but at least they tried, right?

via AutoBlog

Tags: beijing, Jetta, movie, promotion, transformers, Transformers 2, volkswagen

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Considering Beijing has a population of around 14.93 million, its no wonder that it isn’t the cleanest of cities pollution wise. Well, in a push towards a greener city, legislation has been passed that will place cars into one of two categoreys; green and yelllow.

Green cars, as you could have guessed, are cars that meet the requirements for what the Chinese government deems environmentally friendly, yellow on the other hand, are ones who fall short of those requirements. Now, only the green catagorized cars will be allowed to drive through the Beijing’s city center.

This is in addition to the post-Olympic restrictions that the Chinese government extended to reduce pollution in one of their busiest cities. But China, if you’re making the yellow cars drive around the city center doesn’t that mean more driving thus resulting in more pollution?

Read (Gasgoo)

Image via osmoothie

Tags: beijing, china, chinese government, city center, Green, restrictions, yellow

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In a move to enhance the pace and use of electrics cars in their region, China has reportedly announced that they will be paying subsidies to car-buyers to support electric cars.

Under the new strategy, unveiled in a Friday conference attended by several Chinese officials as well as car firms’ executives, Beijing launches nationwide efforts involving car-producers, research institutes and government agencies to prevail over the technological and safety obstacles to develop electric cars.

China will invest $146b in research on the field, while providing most of the subsidies to consumers, rather than car companies. “Otherwise the companies will just fight for subsidies,” vice minister Zhang Shaochun said.

He added that the government believes the market should decide which electric vehicle model would become popular. So the government is paying some research subsidies, while the main move will be to provide large subsidies for buyers of electric cars.

Beijing has already provided up to 60,000 yuan, ($8,800), for purchases by taxi fleets and local government agencies.

(Source) Press

Tags: beijing, car buyers, car companies, car firms, car producers, electric cars, electric vehicle, taxi fleets, vehicle model, vice minister

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In a move to help curb pollution and address the traffic problem plaguing Beijing, it was announced that the post-Olympic restrictions will be extended to help ease traffic congestion and rising air pollution issues. The extension is not really surprising since natives saw the effects of that law in effect to this day.

The restrictions, based on license plate numbers, take 20 percent of the city’s 3.61 million vehicles off roads each weekday.

“It will be carried out from April 11 to April 10, 2010,” said Wang Zhaorong, spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Committee of Communications at a press conference.

Small changes have been made to post-Olympic vehicle restrictions, which began Oct. 11, 2008 and expire April 10.

For private cars, the new ban is only effective from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., compared to 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. under the current rule. The restrictions remain in effect round the clock for government and corporate vehicles.

Residents will be allowed to drive on the Fifth Ring Road throughout the week.

Also, owners will have the same “off-day” for 13 weeks in a row as opposed to just four weeks. The new rotation was designed to reduce confusion.

There continues to be no restrictions on weekends and public holidays and for emergency vehicles, taxies, mass transit vehicles and other public service vehicles.

(Source) Xinhuanet

Tags: air pollution issues, beijing, confusion, corporate vehicles, emergency vehicles, license plate numbers, mass transit vehicles, million vehicles, private cars, public holidays, public service vehicles, small changes, traffic congestion, traffic problem, vehicle restrictions

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