FAW Group aims to sell 4M vehicles annually by 2015

FAW Group, China's No. 2 automaker, aims to sell over 4 million vehicles annually by 2015, with its own-brand vehicles accounting for 50 percent of the total, the company said at the recent Beijing auto show, Inside Line reported.

As the Chinese joint venture partner of Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor and General Motors, FAW Group plans to invest the equivalent of $2.8 billion on research and development over the next five years to expand capacity and accelerate own-brand vehicle development.

FAW sales rose by 27 percent to 1.94 million vehicles last year and 2.3 million units are expected this year. The Changchun-based company will roll out 26 new or redesigned models developed on four platforms by 2015, covering all segments of the passenger-car market.

FAW's own-brand strategy also includes new-energy vehicles. After investing $43.9 million in engineering of this field, the carmaker's plug-in hybrid and pure electric cars will be launched in October for a small-scale trial, a top official of FAW said at the Beijing show.

Volkswagen AG, a major partner of FAW, plans to boost its investment in China by adding 1.6 billion euros ($2.1 bln) to the 4.4 billion the German automaker committed last year to expand capacity and develop new products in the world's largest auto market by 2012.

China's top automaker SAIC Motor, another local partner of General Motors and Volkswagen AG, has set its sales target for this year at three million vehicles, a conservative 2.7 percent increase from last year's figures.