Manufacturing

BYD Co, the Chinese carmaker backed by Warren Buffett, has given up a plan to mass produce electric cars in China by the middle of this year, the South China Morning Post said.

The company will make 100 E6 electric cars to be used as taxis in Shenzhen of Guangdong province, where BYD is based, the report said, citing BYD's Chairman Wang Chuanfu. Further development of the vehicles will depend on the success of the taxis, the newspaper said.

Paul Lin, a spokesman for the carmaker, didn't immediately answer calls to his mobile phone seeking comment. Lin on Feb 24 denied a report that the introduction of BYD's first electric car would be delayed.

BYD, 10 percent owned by Buffett's Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc, said March 8 it plans to market electric and hybrid cars in Europe next year including the E6. The company also planned to start selling the model in the US late this year, Henry Li, general manager of BYD's auto export division, said at the Detroit auto show in January.

James Lentz, Toyota President and COO of Motor Sales in the US, testifies before a House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on the "Response By Toyota and NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) to Incidents of Sudden Unintended Acceleration" on Capitol Hill in Washington February 23, 2010.

Massive recalls of popular Toyota cars and trucks still may "not totally" solve frightening problems of sudden, unintended acceleration, the company's American sales chief conceded Tuesday, a day before the Japanese president of the world's largest automaker must confront angry US lawmakers.

House members listened in rapt silence Tuesday to the tearful testimony of a woman whose car unaccountably surged to 100 mph, then they pressed US sales chief James Lentz on the company's efforts to find and fix the acceleration problems - actions many suggested were too late and too limited.

Lentz apologized repeatedly for safety defects that led to recalls of some 8.5 million Toyota cars and trucks, and he acknowledged the changes the company is making probably aren't the end of the story.

Putting remaining doubts to rest is of vital importance to millions more Toyota owners in the United States and elsewhere, who have continued to drive but with serious concerns about their cars. Toyota sales have suffered, too, and a small army of dealers showed up on Capitol Hill Tuesday, arguing that this week's high-profile hearings are unfairly targeting their company.

"We are vigilant and we continue to look for potential causes," Lentz told the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

That search had better continue, a number of lawmakers said, openly questioning Toyota's insistence that the problems are mechanical, not linked to the vehicles' sophisticated electronics.

Of 15 top recipients, the Besturn B70 car by First Automotive Works (FAW) Group was the only design patent to win a gold medal at the 11th China Patent Awards in Beijing on Feburary 8.

China's highest government-sponsored patent award, the event aims to boost the nation's intellectual property strategy and accelerate creation of proprietary intellectual property.

The recent awards were the first after a new national intellectual property strategy was announced in 2008. Participating projects were significantly better than those in the previous sessions, according to organizers.

The car design fused traditional Chinese culture with international design trends, creating an image both fashionable and powerful, industry insiders said.

A model of C919 made by Commercial Aircraft Corp of China is displayed. The State-owned company expects to build 2,000 C919s over 20 years. [Bloomberg News]

LONDON/BOSTON: The future of aviation in China, the world's fastest-growing major air-travel market, will be on display in Singapore this week and General Electric Co (GE), Rockwell Collins Inc and GKN Plc all want to be onboard.

Commercial Aircraft Corp of China, also known as Comac, will be at the Singapore Air Show, displaying a model of the 168-seat C919, which is designed to compete with the Boeing Co 737 and Airbus SAS A320. Only one major supplier has been selected for the plane so far, a GE-Safran SA engine venture, which won a $10 billion contract.

State-owned Comac expects to build about 2,000 C919s over 20 years, and hopes to secure 10 percent of the global market, according to Safran. The aircraft is already being touted as a domestic success since the government will place orders and allocate them to State-owned carriers Air China, China Southern and China Eastern Airlines.