AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)03/24 Report--

As the COVID-19 epidemic continues to expand in overseas regions, the shortage of medical materials has become a problem in many countries. In order to solve the shortage of medical supplies, foreign car companies have followed the example of Chinese car companies to switch to the production of face masks during the epidemic.

A few days ago, FCA, one of the Big three in the United States, announced that it would transform its production line through several of its factories and start producing masks in the coming weeks to ease the shortage of medical supplies and donate critical medical equipment to emergency and medical personnel.

According to Shawn Morgan, a spokesman for Fiat Chrysler, the company will take the lead in the production of masks in China, because the current urgent need for masks, the best location must be a normally operating factory. Due to the recent expansion of the epidemic, FCA has temporarily suspended production at several plants in North America and Europe, while China has gradually brought the epidemic under control and resumed production, so it is also the fastest to switch masks to other factories in China.

Fiat Chrysler is understood to have begun installing production lines at a Chinese factory this week and will gradually climb to 1 million masks a month in the coming weeks, focusing on demand from the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Affected by the previous domestic novel coronavirus epidemic, the domestic factory of FCA has also been suspended for some time. However, with the gradual weakening of the domestic epidemic trend, most factories have also returned to production.

According to FCA, a FCA plant in Guangzhou resumed production on February 17 and a plant in Changsha will resume production soon, but it did not give a specific date; Guangzhou Auto Fick Changsha plant then began orderly resumption of production on February 19.

It is worth mentioning that GAC Fick's factory in Changsha, Hunan Province, began to produce masks as early as February this year under the leadership of GAC GROUP. At present, the daily output has reached 600000, with a cumulative production of nearly 10 million.

According to the data, FCA operates Chinese factories through a joint venture with Guangzhou Automobile Group. The joint venture produces Jeep Cherokee and Grand Commander models at its plant in Changsha and Jeep Renegade and Compass models at its plant in Guangzhou.

Although the conversion of masks through Chinese factories will have a certain impact on FCA, FCA did not perform prominently in China in 2019. Last year, FCA lost US $39.6 million in Asia, with sales of only 149000 vehicles, down 29% from the same period last year. Guangzhou Auto Fick's annual sales nearly halved, falling 40.96% year-on-year to 74000 vehicles, and its market share has fallen to 0.35%.

There are also many reasons for the huge decline. slow new cars, frequent problems and chaotic positioning have all become the reasons for the rapid decline of Guangzhou Auto Fick, thus it can be seen that Guangzhou Auto Fick has not received too much attention from FCA Group, so that Guangzhou Auto Fick's sales have plummeted since 2018 and has become the worst joint venture under GAC GROUP.

To this end, FCA said in its previous financial results that the decline in sales and low performance of Chinese joint ventures had offset its increased revenue and profits in the Asia-Pacific region in the third quarter.

However, it is believed that the epidemic continues under the influence of overseas expansion, FCA Group will also suffer a greater impact. At present, Italy is the most serious epidemic area in Europe, and the vast majority of FCA industries are located in Europe. At the same time, as the epidemic continues to spread in North America, FCA has shut down most of its factories around the world.

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