Cleaner Greener China

I must admit, that when I read this I did a double take as my previous experiences with Foton include a lot of time inhaling noxious fumes from their heavy trucks going down the highway.

However, if true, the recent announcement China’s Foton says clean energy car factory opened in Beijing comes a nice surprise, and further cements my belief that China is going to own the clean tech car market going forward.

A few reasons this new factility gives me hope:

1) The facility will produce up to 5,000 clean-energy buses and 400,000 fuel-efficient engines a year – i.e. they are not trying to go after the hybrid care market, but are developing technologies that can pull 30 tons of stuff and people in a more efficient manner

and

2) As implied by #1, the fact that they are selling 80 times the engines as finished products, that says to me that they either are going after an aftermarket of retrofitting.. or more interestingly.. htey are simply going to work with other transport OEMs as an engine distributor (Look out Cummins).

for me, and keep in mind this is being backed by Beijing, these 2 items offer some hope that the business plan is headed in the right direction.  there are sure to be some hurdles as they look to develop and maintain a quality product (think of the mechanics they will need to train)

Looking into a crystal ball, I would be interested to see how Foton could leverage the domestic market on a larger scale.  Like Sany