Tag: cars

I am pretty impressed that North Korea’s Pyeongwha Motors is able to have enough demand in North Korea to support 25 different models of cars:

The United States has Ford. Germany has Volkswagen. Japan has Toyota. And North Korea has Pyeonghwa Motors.  Run by Kim Jong-un’s regime, the company produces a tiny number of vehicles at its factory in the city of Nampo, a seaport on North Korea’s west coast. At its sole dealership in the capital Pyongyang, visitors can view its lineup up close, take a test drive and even purchase spare parts. Andray Abrahamian, research director at North Korea-focused nonprofit Choson Exchange, visited the showroom last month, and provided Mashable brochures on the current selection of 25 models:  [Mashable]

You can read the rest at the link, but Pyeonghwa Motors was actually started by the South Korean Unification Church and ownership given to the Kim regime.  Their cars also average about 80 horsepower which is incredibly slow anywhere else, but like many thing good enough for North Korea.

It looks like the South Korean government is looking to increase taxes even further on imported cars:

Taxes on luxury imported cars are likely to go up, with lawmakers and the government seeking a law revision to impose taxes based on prices instead of engine displacement.

Rep. Shim Jae-chul from the ruling Saenuri Party proposed a revision of the law earlier this week, saying the current system was unfair and did not reflect technology advances.

“The current volume-based tax system could be unfair,” he said. “With the development of technology, car owners with lower engine displacement, higher performance and higher price pay less tax than drivers with lower priced, low-performance cars.”

According to the current law, 80 won per cubic centimeter (cc) is imposed for cars with displacement less than 1,000 cc, 140 won for cars with displacement between 1,000 and 1,600 cc, and 200 won for cars with displacement over 1,600 cc.

For example, BMW 520d owners pay almost the same amount of vehicle taxes as those driving such local brands as Hyundai Motor’s Sonata midsize as they are in the same segment in terms of engine displacement. The price of the German vehicle is about three times higher than the Korean car.

Also, many lavish cars nowadays are designed with smaller displacements to burn less fuel or run a hybrid engine. Shim said a growing number of electronic cars are another factor to consider. [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

The video of this guy destroying his leased Mercedes in front of the dealership in Gwangju has gone viral in Korea.  However, after reading the whole story it appears that this guy was partly to blame for what happened due to customizations he made to the leased car:

Mercedes-Benz Korea came under fire after a driver of one of its luxury vehicles, dissatisfied with the company’s after-sales service, posted a video online of himself giving the car a violent going-over with a golf club.

The video was uploaded to YouTube on Friday, the same day that the company opened a 25 billion won ($21 million) staff training center
developed to improve its customer
service.

According to Seobu Precinct Police in Gwangju on Tuesday, a leaser of a Benz S63 AMG, surnamed Yoo, was booked on Monday without detention on a charge of obstructing a business. The police said the 33-year-old driver of the 209 million won luxury sedan parked it near the entrance to a Benz dealership and smashed its windshield and doors a dozen times with a golf club.

Yoo then posted a video clip of the assault on YouTube.

The police said the business obstruction charge was applied because Yoo left the car near the dealership for 17 hours.

Yoo told police that he leased the car in March and customized the soundproofing and exhaust systems.

But the car’s engine suddenly stopped working on three separate occasions while driving, including on an overpass on Sept. 9 with his pregnant wife and 5-year-old son in the car.

Yoo found a clause in his contract that guarantees a car owner will get a refund or a replacement vehicle if the same problem is found three times with a part. But according to Yoo, the Benz dealership wouldn’t cooperate.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

It is going to be interesting to see if the hydrogen fuel cell cars ever catch on because right now I don’t see how someone can buy one when there are so few fueling stations:

Hyundai Motor Co. said Monday it believes hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are the future for eco-friendly cars despite challenges of limited infrastructure and slow sales.

South Korea’s largest automaker has sold or leased 273 Tucson fuel cell SUVs since beginning production in 2013, lower than its 1,000 target, mostly in Europe and California.

Kim Sae Hoon, general manager at Hyundai’s fuel cell engineering design team, said fuel cell cars represent a bigger opportunity than electric cars because competition is less fierce. Hydrogen-powered cars also give more flexibility to designers, he said. They can be scaled to big vehicles such as buses as well as small cars.

They can also be refueled as quickly as gasoline cars while traveling more miles than electric vehicles. The Tucson’s Europe model, called ix35 Fuel Cell, can travel up to 594 kilometers (369 miles) while its U.S. model travels up to 265 miles (426 kilometers) on one charge. It emits water vapor and no greenhouse gases.

High prices and the dearth of fueling stations are barriers to sales of fuel cell vehicles. Hyundai said it will be another 10 years before hydrogen cars start gaining wider acceptance. In the meantime, sales of eco-friendly cars are dominated by hybrid models such as Toyota’s Prius and electric vehicles such as Nissan’s Leaf, which are more affordable than fuel cell cars.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

This is going to be a tough marketplace for any company even one like Apple to break in to:

Apple Inc. may already be positioned to evolve into a global automaker in many ways that other Silicon Valley companies aren’t.

The tech company has put a few hundred employees to work on a secretive project to develop an electric automobile, a person familiar with the matter has said. While Apple often tests ideas that don’t get released, the work underscores the company’s long-held desire to play a greater role in the automotive space, which is ripe for more of a merging with users’ digital lives.

“It makes a ton of sense,” Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray Cos., said Saturday. “If you would’ve said 10 years ago, ‘Apple is going to be in the car business,’ I think people would’ve said you’re crazy – because it would’ve been crazy – and today it’s a much different company that’s able to tackle these massive addressable markets.”

Apple, with a market capitalization that’s more than $700 billion, needs to continue growing sales in iPhones, its largest revenue generator, while also expanding into new markets, such as automobiles, if it’s to reach a $1 trillion valuation, Munster said. He added that he doesn’t think Apple would bring out a car in the next five years.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but it seems with all the talk of a Google Car that Apple feels like they have to get into the car industry as well.  It seems like they should just partner with Tesla and revolutionize the car industry that way?

It looks like Google is serious about pushing for a near term release of their self driving car technology.  I can see this probably being a custom option available to customers just like Ford currently has the automatic parking feature in some of their vehicles:

LG Electronics Inc. said Thursday it will supply battery packs to the self-driving cars to be launched by U.S. Google Inc. a move that wil certainly help South Korea’s No. 2 tech giant tap deeper into the automobile industry.

“We have been conducting various projects with Google as a strategic partner. Our automotive technology will now be applied to Google’s self-driving cars,” an LG official said.

A battery pack is a set of any number of individual battery cells.

Google said it will also partner with U.S. automaker General Motors Co., Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp., Germany’s Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG, and join forces with chipmaker Nvidia Corp. and German automotive technology giant Bosch as well.

Earlier this month, LG said its chief has discussed possible business tie-ups with the head of Mercedes-Benz. The company launched the Vehicle Components Division by regrouping its business sectors in 2013 in line with its efforts to tap new sources of profits. [Yonhap]