Detroit 3 ban most travel, monitor critical China market

The Detroit 3 already were dealing with a stagnating China market before the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Now their quest to solve the sales puzzle there has been complicated by a virus that continues to spread across the globe and prompted an 80 percent auto-sales drop in China last month.

The pandemic also has begun to disrupt operations in North America. Ford Motor Co. last week banned all business travel until March 27.

General Motors said it was requiring "senior leadership approval" for all air travel and encouraging employees to instead use virtual meeting services such as Skype. GM canceled a media drive for the upcoming Chevrolet Trailblazer that was scheduled for this week in Arizona.

At Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, only essential domestic and international travel will be approved for employees, a spokesman said.

A Ford spokesman said there may be some exceptions to the company's travel ban, but they would be rare.

In China, manufacturing schedules have been interrupted, consumers are staying home and many dealerships have closed. GM CEO Mary Barra said "the market will come back," but added, "I can't predict exactly when."

The Chinese market is a major source of volume for GM, but performance there has been sliding for years. GM and its joint-venture partner, SAIC, reported sales of 1.48 million in 2019, down from 1.9 million in 2017.

The automaker's SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co. partnership generated 1.6 million sales in 2019, down from 1.8 million last year and 2.1 million in 2018.

Ford sales have fallen in China as well, going from 1.2 million in 2017 to 600,000 last year. Ford suffered a $771 million loss in China last year.

Two Ford employees in China have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and were getting better, Reuters reported.

GM said the supply chain and engineering teams at the automaker and its joint-venture partners "have developed and are executing contingency plans to mitigate the impact."

Highlighting the importance of the region, FCA said in its annual report last month that China has the highest number of first-time car buyers in the world.

After a period of widespread uncertainty, some normalcy was beginning to return to both the industrial and retail bases in China. GM said it began implementing a staggered production restart across SAIC-GM and SAIC-GM-Wuling plants in mid-February.

FCA, which has three plants in China, said its production has resumed "under the approval of the relevant regional and national governments." FCA said China offices reopened March 2 under the guidance of the regional and national governments. "Around 80 percent of our dealers in China are now back open for business and we are working to ensure we have the appropriate vehicle inventory to match market demand," FCA said in a statement.