The joint venture has been agreed upon ever since October last year, when the tow agreed to create Sichuan Hyundai, a company that it will be based in Ziyang City. In the first months of operations, the company will use the production lines of the Chinese partner, but plans for the build of a new facility are also in place.
The joint venture will produce trucks and buses for the Chinese market. Once all the upgrades to the existing facilities and the build of the new plant are completed, sometime in 2013, the new company will have a combined output of the two vehicle classes of about 160,000 units each year.
Sichuan Hyundai will be selling its models under two brands, with the Hyundai-badged vehicles expected to be the top of the line models.
The move made by Hyundai this week has been decided in the light of the estimates that say the Chinese commercial vehicle market will grow from 4.3 million vehicles in 2010 to no less than 5.2 million vehicles by the middle of the decade.
The South Korean manufacturer is relying heavily on China at the moment, the country being partially responsible for the 21 percent increase in sales it reported for the first three months of the year.
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