China 2015: Cars of Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang Province

After Yanji in the Korean Autonomous Prefecture, we are now headed north to cross over to Mudanjiang in the Heilongjiang province, home to just under 1 million inhabitants.

Mudanjiang does have an airport, but it doesn’t have direct flights to either Yanji or Harbin, so it’s bus riding all the way for me to join these 3 cities and a good opportunity to check out the car landscape in the hilly Chinese countryside.

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China 2015: The 10 Most Impressive Carmakers at Auto Shanghai (Part 3)

This is it: the most impressive carmaker at Auto Shanghai, Haval.

Like in Beijing last year, I was most impressed by Haval at Auto Shanghai, and for a variety of reasons. Haval is Great Wall’s SUV marque, a standalone brand since July 2013. Above all, having topped my ranking last year already, I had high expectations for the brand and they didn’t disappoint, which was a very significant achievement on its own.

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  • Probert They already have hybrids, but these won't ever be them as they are built on the modular E-GMP skateboard.
  • Justin You guys still looking for that sportbak? I just saw one on the Facebook marketplace in Arizona
  • 28-Cars-Later I cannot remember what happens now, but there are whiteblocks in this period which develop a "tick" like sound which indicates they are toast (maybe head gasket?). Ten or so years ago I looked at an '03 or '04 S60 (I forget why) and I brought my Volvo indy along to tell me if it was worth my time - it ticked and that's when I learned this. This XC90 is probably worth about $300 as it sits, not kidding, and it will cost you conservatively $2500 for an engine swap (all the ones I see on car-part.com have north of 130K miles starting at $1,100 and that's not including freight to a shop, shop labor, other internals to do such as timing belt while engine out etc).
  • 28-Cars-Later Ford reported it lost $132,000 for each of its 10,000 electric vehicles sold in the first quarter of 2024, according to CNN. The sales were down 20 percent from the first quarter of 2023 and would “drag down earnings for the company overall.”The losses include “hundreds of millions being spent on research and development of the next generation of EVs for Ford. Those investments are years away from paying off.” [if they ever are recouped] Ford is the only major carmaker breaking out EV numbers by themselves. But other marques likely suffer similar losses. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fords-120000-loss-vehicle-shows-california-ev-goals-are-impossible Given these facts, how did Tesla ever produce anything in volume let alone profit?
  • AZFelix Let's forego all of this dilly-dallying with autonomous cars and cut right to the chase and the only real solution.