LONDON, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) — Andy Palmer, CEO of Aston Martin, a British manufacturer of luxury sports cars, believed that there’s a great potential and opportunity for Britain and China to collaborate more on exchanging technology and talent in the car industry.
MARKET OF GROWING IMPORTANCE
“For Aston Martin, the Chinese market is not only important but also growing in importance,” Palmer told Xinhua in an exclusive interview during the ongoing 15th World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention (WCEC) in London.
He said that Aston Martin, founded in 1913, entered the Chinese market relatively late, but it won very quickly the No. 1 market share in the country’s luxury sports car market.
“Now China is much more open … I think that’s a really great sign of how quickly China has elevated itself to the top level of automotive manufacturing,” said Palmer.
“As we look to the future, obviously China is the fastest growing and biggest automotive market in the world,” he said.
He took Aston Martin’s first sport utility vehicle (SUV), the DBX, which has been showcased during the four-day WCEC event since Monday, as an example, and said that “China is so important to us that we are going to do a global launch of the DBX in Beijing in just a few weeks’ time.”
ELECTRIFICATION
Palmer said “we are experiencing the most exciting period in the car industry since we switched from the horse to the motorcar. The changes we’ll see over the coming years ahead will be unparalleled.”
He noted that Aston Martin’s team in China is staffed 100 percent by Chinese nationals, and spoke highly of the partnership, in which both sides have something to share and something to learn.
“China has really been leading the charge towards electrification,” he said. “And in that context, our sister brand Aston Martin Lagonda will be a 100 percent electric platform for us, with China being perhaps the most important market.”
Palmer also named several technologies that the two countries could interchange and thereby lead the world, such as artificial intelligence (AI), electric trains, batteries, mass reduction and drag reduction.
MORE POST-BREXIT OPPORTUNITIES
“Brexit has been going on for a long time and it has created uncertainty for a long time,” Palmer said. “And we need to get past the uncertainty.”
As a manufacturing group, Aston Martin prefers to avoid a no-deal Brexit, but he said that “most importantly we’d like to get to a point as quickly as possible to eliminate uncertainty, because that uncertainty is causing a decline of sales for the whole industry both in EU and in the UK.”
Palmer hopes the UK can strike more free trade agreements with countries including China to boost the industry.
“The UK and the British people are great proponents of free trade … I sincerely hope that after Brexit, the UK can find a way of looking for free trade talks with lots of different countries.”
Like most carmakers in the UK, Aston Martin’s supply chain is predominantly in Europe at present. However, Palmer has already foreseen an opportunity to bring in parts from other countries in a post-Brexit world where the UK has more free trade agreements with other nations.
“I would say there is no greater opportunity than trading with China … which means over time there will be more collaboration with Chinese companies,” he stressed.
“We already see that starting to happen, and if we can get to a position of having a free trade agreement with China, that could only help,” he said. Enditem