In efforts to convince the labor union and public that China’s Doublestar is a credible buyer of Kumho Tire, Doublestar Chairman Chai Yongsen on Thursday promised autonomous management of the local firm and guaranteed three years of employment.While urging the labor union to cooperate with the recapitalization deal Doublestar had signed with creditors last week, Chai hinted at a possible withdrawal if the union does not come on board by the end of this month.“Together with Kumho Tire, Doublestar

As Kumho Tire continues to face fervent opposition from unionized labor regarding the sale of the company to China’s state-run tiremaker, Doublestar Chairman Chai Yongsen is visiting Korea to persuade the labor union, the Korea Development Bank confirmed Wednesday.While here, Chai is scheduled to hold a press conference Thursday morning at the KDB headquarters and discuss unresolved issues with creditors during the trip.As for the labor union, Chai is expected to explain Doublestar’s future inve

South Korean tiremaker Kumho Tire will supply its Crugen HP91 high performance original equipment tires to German luxury BMW’s new X3 SUV, diversifying its customer portfolio, the company said Tuesday.The tires made at Kumho’s Gwangju plant in South Jeolla Province will be supplied to the BMW new X3 that began production at the Spartanburg factory in June 2017.The X3 midsize SUV is BMW’s top-selling model first released in 2003. The German carmaker has since sold over 1.6 million units worldwide

Hyundai Motor received a total of 733 preorders on the first day of opening for its Nexo, the automaker’s latest sport utility vehicle powered by fuel cells, the company said Tuesday.The number of preorders is three times more the number of vehicles subject to the government’s subsidy, reflecting its popularity, officials said.  Hyundai Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun (right) poses with Chris Urmson, CEO of Aurora, at a press conference held to unveil Nexo on sidelines of Consumer Electronics Show i

South Korean carmaker says K9 will compete with Mercedes’ E series

As carmakers compete in the eco-friendly vehicle market, Toyota Motor Korea is poised to lead the hybrid market here, achieving average annual growth of 82 percent, the company said Tuesday.Toyota and its luxury brand Lexus sold a combined 19,102 units of hybrid vehicles here in 2017, up 26 percent on-year, the company said.The two made up 84 percent of the imported hybrid car market in 2017, when a total of 22,773 units of hybrids were newly registered, according to data from the Korea Automobi

Inching closer to a deadline set by the creditors of Kumho Tire for the protesting labor union to decide on selling the ailing company to Chinese tiremaker Doublestar, related parties are making all out efforts to hype up public opinion for the sale, against the opposing voices of the labor union.Office workers of Kumho Tire on Monday held a protest in front of the Kumho Asiana headquarters in northern Seoul, opposing a walkout and calling for prompt management normalization.Doublestar Chairman

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into a series of deadly crashes in which airbags in Hyundai and Kia cars failed to inflate. (Yonhap)The administration's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) "is currently aware of six crashes with significant collision-related damage events involving Hyundai and Kia models where airbags failed to deploy in frontal crashes," which four people died and six were hurt, its website said.The "failure of the airbag cont

Amid continued uncertainty surrounding the fate of GM Korea, a report Thursday showed that the automaker achieved the highest productivity per worker of any Korean carmaker, countering the company’s argument that its poor performance was due to high operating and labor costs.GM Korea and its second-biggest shareholder Korea Development Bank officially started due diligence this week, following the headquarters’ decision to shut down one of its plants in the country.In a report released Thursday,

Ailing automaker GM Korea Co. should raise its capacity utilization, cut fixed costs and receive a new cash injection of around 1 trillion won to get back on its feet, a report said Thursday.The report comes as the local unit of the US auto giant struggles to stay afloat amid snowballing deficits. GM Korea posted a cumulative loss of around 3 trillion won ($2.8 billion) from 2014-17, with its equity capital eroded completely.Citing low productivity, GM announced in mid-February that it would shu

Toyota Korea has rolled out the Prius C hybrid compact car, boasting 19.4 kilometers per hour fuel economy and an affordable price tag of 24.9 million won ($23,400), with aims to bolster its hybrid vehicle portfolio, the company said Wednesday.Marking the last model of Toyota’s Prius hybrid car lineup, the Prius C was first introduced in Japan in 2011, followed by the US and other countries.Reaping popularity worldwide, the Prius C hybrid is the Japanese automaker’s second best-selling hybrid mo

Will ex-head of GM’s Latin America operations save Korean unit?

Amid a debacle over its plant shutdown, GM Korea applied Monday to Incheon Metropolitan City and South Gyeongsang Province for a designation of its remaining three plants as foreign investment zones for tax benefits.During his fourth visit to Korea last week, GM International President Barry Engle met with Lee Dong-gull, head of the state-run Korea Development Bank, and related officials. He said the automaker would submit requests for factory sites in Bupyeong, Incheon and Changwon, South Gyeon

Audi Volkswagen Korea, the local distributor of the two German brands, has received a temporary permit from the Seoul government to test drive its level 3 automation here, marking the first among import carmakers, the company said Thursday.Equipped with self-driving systems, the Audi A8 will run on local roads and K-City, Korea‘s test bed for automated vehicles in Gyeonggi Province, collecting data on traffic conditions here, while developing its level 3 conditionally automated driving technolog

Lee rejects GM’s request to cover part of debts, saying it’s none of KDB’s business