An industry forum titled Aluminum in Transportation Applications Forum 2011 started in Chongqing, China on October 19. Mr. Yao Jie, vice president of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, made a speech on Chinese automobile industry and gave an outlook that vehicle production in China is forecasted to reach 25 million sets per year in 2015 which accounts for 30% in the world total car production.
The forum was held after 4 years from the previous meeting. There were approximately 200 attendances including Chongqing government’s high officials, Chinese major aluminium re-rollers and other manufacturers of Chinese nonferrous metal, automobile and aerospace industries. Japanese major aluminium re-rollers including Furukawa-Sky Aluminum, Nikkeikin ACT and Kobe Steel also attended the event. Mr. Yao explained vehicle production in China accumulatively exceeded 13 million sets for January-September 2011 and increased by 3% from the same period of 2010. He analyzed the growth is slowing down but the market is stably increasing even suggesting continuous uptrend for a while. He viewed passenger vehicle would represent 80% in China’s total car production at estimated 25 million sets in 2015 and commercial vehicle would account for rest 20%. Fleet in China is expected to reach 127-136 million cars in 2015, which would account for 11-12% in the world. Mr. Yao viewed global car production is forecasted to reach 83.2 million sets with the fleet at 1.17 billion cars in 2015.