Chinese Car Brands Are Racing to Get to North America First

Chalk it up to coincidence that a California company called HAAH Automotive Holdings announced it would build Chery's Exceed SUVs, under a new brand name, from knock-down kits in the U.S., and that Geely will merge with the Volvo brand, weeks after President Trump announced Phase One of a trade deal with China, and just as the Wuhan-based 2019 nCoV—you know it better as coronavirus—expanded as a worldwide health epidemic.

HAAH, Chery, Geely, Volvo, and the nascent Geely North American brand, Lynk & Co., certainly want none of this. They just want to sell cars from the world's biggest automotive market to the second-biggest automotive market, especially as sales have seriously slipped from China's peak of 24.72 million in calendar 2017. China's 2019 passenger car sales totaled 21.44 million last year, off 9.6 percent from 2018, according to statista.com, while U.S. sales in '19 totaled 17.11 million, off just 1.2 percent from '18, Automotive News reports, marking the fourth year of 17-plus-million sales here.