Automotive News Europe - January 5, 2009 - 8

PAGE 8 · www.autonewseurope.com January 5, 2009 Bosch opens Inner Mongolia test site World’s largest partsmaker may have to share location as 6 other firms plan similar sites Namrita Chow Automotive News Europe YAKESHI, Inner Mongolia, China Barren, wind-swept steppes. Deep blankets of snow stretching to the horizon. Bone-chilling, sub-zero temperatures. It’s a inhospitable environment for Robert Bosch’s latest proving ground. But the facility in Yakeshi, Inner Mongolia, near China’s far northern border with Siberia, is the country’s new hot spot for coldweather testing. The German partsmaker spent ¤17 million on the proving ground, which opened November 28. Now other suppliers and automakers plan their own test tracks in the area. Why Yakeshi, a remote town some 1,100km north of Beijing? “We needed a place that has Celsius temperatures of 30 degrees below zero for five months of the year. Yakeshi meets that requirement,” said Ferdinando Sorrentino, general manager of Bosch (Hulunbeier) Automotive Test and Technology Center and regional president of Chassis Systems Control, China. Photo: Namrita Chow Largest winter test location Bosch’s facility in Yakeshi is the company’s largest winter test site. About 40 Bosch engineers will work here during the winter season, which runs from November through April. The facility has an expansive network of icy runs, test tracks, hills, snow-packed roads and even a frozen lake. The local government is in talks with six domestic suppliers and automakers to develop their own winter test tracks here, said Ba Shu Huan, party committee secretary of Yakeshi. Among them are domestic automaker Chery Automobile and the China Bosch engineers will use the company’s newest and largest winter testing facility to try out locally produced active safety systems such as electronic stability control. Ferdinando Sorrentino (inset) says Yakeshi provides engineers something they need: a place with very low temperatures for 5 months a year. Automotive Technology & Research Center (CATARC), Ba said. There is no construction date. But the contractor that built Bosch’s facility, the Swedish firm ATM (Hulunbeier) Automotive Winter Test Co., is working on test courses with more basic facilities to meet the needs of domestic players, says ATM Managing Director Lars Holmgren. Bosch’s facility will enhance testing of locally produced active safety technologies such as the electronic stability control, which helps control skidding. Bosch began making ESC systems in China in 2005. But the ESC installation rate in China’s auto market is currently a mere 7 percent. Still, Bosch says the success of its antilock brake systems in China shows there is big potential for active safety devices here. Bosch started local ABS production in 2003, and it now has an installation rate of 67 percent with Chinese automakers. “Our test track is Bosch owned. We don’t plan to share it with anyone,” Chen Liming, director of engineering at Bosch Chassis Systems Control China, said in an interview with Automotive News China in a Mongolian yurt situated at the test track to shelter visitors from the freezing cold. The track still isn’t finished. Phase 2 will be completed in 2010 and include a chess board area where squares alternate between ice and asphalt. Boxberg, Germany, has been scouting locations for one. While the global economic crisis is hitting all corners of the globe, Bosch remains optimistic about the auto industry’s future in China – and the need to strengthen testing to meet local conditions. “It’s a dedicated test site for Chinese-dedicated projects,” says Werner Struth, president of Chassis Systems Control at Bosch. “We firmly believe in a bright future for the Chinese economy and the Chinese ANE car industry.” Seeking a summer site A summer test site in China is also possible for Bosch. Rudi Ott, vice president of Chassis Systems Control at Bosch’s proving ground in Small Slovak town is caught between jobs and traffic Heavy border traffic from Hyundai and Kia plants causes problems for townspeople Lyle Frink Automotive News Europe CADCA, Slovakia This small Slovak town is located in the middle of a new Korean automotive cluster. The arrival of Hyundai, Kia and many of their suppliers has given the town’s 27,000 inhabitants something they badly needed: jobs. But improvements to the local infrastructure have not kept pace with the surrounding area’s rapid growth so Cadca residents now feel that their town is suffering at the hands of the industry that helped save it. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Frantisek Scury, head of the Cadca’s municipal construction Cadca is on the main road between Hyundai-Kia Automotive’s plants in Zilina, Slovakia, and Nosovice, Czech Republic. department, told Automotive News Europe. “Our No. 1 complaint is truck traffic.” Opened in 2006, Kia Motors’ plant in Zilina, Slovakia, is 33km to the south of Cadca and Hyundai’s plant in Nosovice, Czech Republic, which opened last year, is 52km to the northwest. The main road linking the factories, the E75, runs through the center of Cadca. Scury did not provide traffic statistics for Cadca, but the town’s problems are easy to see: traffic jams, clogged and dilapidated intersections and soot-covered buildings. Another good indication of how much traffic has risen in Cadca is data on the number of trucks that cross the border between SvrcinovecMosty, Slovakia, and Jablunkova, Czech Republic. The border is just 7km away from Cadca so most of those trucks use the town’s roads. Between 2005 and More jobs The % of unemployed in the district of Cadca, Slovakia, has decreased since Hyundai-Kia Automotive started producing cars nearby 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 Source: Slovak Statistics Office Photo: Lyle Frink Most of the trucks that transport goods to and from Hyundai-Kia Automotive’s nearby plants go through this intersection in Cadca, Slovakia. A planned new road should help ease the traffic burden, but the project has been delayed by a lawsuit. 2007, the number of trucks crossing the border has risen more than 200 percent to 1,034,000. To relieve the strain on Cadca, a new road is supposed to be built north of the city. The road was due to open in 2010, but a lawsuit delayed things. This summer the courts rejected appeals by opponents to stop the construction of the road. “Now it is a question of funding and government priorities,” Scury said. “According to the timetable we have now, it could be completed in 2014.” At the town hall, the focus had shifted away from creating jobs to rebuilding a community. “We have to make priorities,” Scury said. “We are putting money into infrastructure so that people can ANE live better.” 7.18 9.59 10.76 11.93 14.86 Help is coming Many of those trucks are going to or coming from Kia’s and Hyundai’s assembly plants.

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Automotive News Europe - January 5, 2009

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