BMW to build car plant (audio)

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BMW to build $1bn car plant in Mexico

BMW will invest $ bn to build a car plant in Mexico, following other premium automakers and trying to use the low-cost location.

The plant will have an annual capacity of around 150,000 vehicles, with production expected to begin in 2019. BMW will build it near San Luis Postosí and create an initial 1,500 jobs. Last year, the BMW group sold almost 2m vehicles.

“BMW will be even better positioned to take advantage of the growth potential in the region,” said Harald Krueger, BMW board member for production. “We are continuing our strategy of ‘production follows the market’.”

BMW will join premium rivals Audi and Daimler in setting up plants in Mexico to benefit from its low labour costs and the North American Free-Trade Agreement, which provides access to the key US car market, the world’s second largest.

Mexico is already the world’s fourth-biggest car exporting country and investments totalling $10bn are expected in coming years. The industry represents 4 per cent of Mexico’s GDP and nearly a quarter of total exports.

BMW is trying to preserve its lead as the world’s biggest premium carmaker by sales in the face of a challenge from Mercedes-Benz, which is launching a range of sporty new models.

In March BMW announced a $1bn expansion of its sports utility vehicle plant in Spantanburg, US, which will become the largest in BMW’s plant network. It is also expanding a carbon fibre plant in Moses Lake, Washington, which produces raw materials for its i3 and i8 electric vehicles. BMW will also open a plant in Brazil later this year.

adapted from The Financial Times

Uber can legally operate

OLI SCARFF/GETTY IMAGES

The Uber application, which allows users to summon an independent driver, is opposed by taxi unions, who say it does not comply with the regulations that taxi drivers face.

LONDON — In the battle between Europe’s taxi drivers and the ride-sharing service Uber, score one for Uber.

On Thursday, London’s transport regulator said that Uber, the West Coast technology startup that has faced protests in major cities across Europe from London to Madrid, can legally operate in the British capital.

The decision by Transport for London to allow Uber to continue operating in London is centered on the technology that powers the startup’s service.

Under London’s taxi rules, only licensed black taxis can use meters in their vehicles to charge customers based on distance and time. The city’s licensed taxi drivers argued that Uber’s technology, which uses a smartphone-based technology to charge customers at the end of the journey based on the length of their trip, broke this regulation.

Transport for London, however, disagreed.

“Smartphones that transmit location information between vehicles and operators have no operational or physical connection with the vehicles,” the regulator said Thursday in a statement. The phones are “not taximeters within the meaning of the legislation,” it said.

The decision follows a regionwide protest by thousands of taxi drivers in Europe, who say they believe that Uber — which allows people to book taxis through a smartphone application — does not comply with local regulations and does not pay enough taxes in the cities where it operates. Earlier this week, cabbies in Milan and Barcelona again took to the streets to protest Uber’s presence, although the service has yet to expand to the Spanish capital.

Uber has faced challenges locally as well, according to recent Globe reports. Taxi drivers from Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline staged a rolling protest outside Uber’s Boston offices in May, and more recently, a Boston labor lawyer filed a lawsuit against the service, saying that exploits drivers.

Cambridge officials are considering regulations to restrict ride-sharing services, a move that outraged supporters of new system.

In London, the ruling by the regulator is not the final green light for Uber. To clarify whether Uber’s technology can be considered a meter, Transport for London said it was asking a British court to make a final ruling.

That decision must now wait until legal cases brought by a London taxi union against six individual Uber drivers is completed, the regulator added.

“Using a meter in a private vehicle is a criminal matter,” said Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, who added that the cases against the Uber drivers would probably be heard in the autumn.

Uber welcomed the London regulator’s decision Thursday.

“Today is a victory for common sense,” Jo Bertram, Uber’s general manager for Britain and Ireland, said Thursday in a statement. “Uber on, London.”

   adapted from The Boston Globe

Flip flops: from Kenya to Washington (video)

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