Chinese in Talks to Send Pickups to Mexico

MEXICO CITY, June 14 — A small Chinese automaker and its New Jersey partner are negotiating with Mexican officials to import Chinese-made pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, the first step toward establishing a beachhead in North America.
As part of the deal, the partners expect to begin building an assembly plant in Tijuana this year that could export pickups and S.U.V.’s to the United States within a couple of years, said Marc N. Scheinman, a consultant to Chamco Auto of Parsippany, N.J.
A Chinese delegation met Thursday with the governor of Baja California to discuss details and a formal announcement could come next week, said Alejandro Contreras, a spokesman for the state government.
The Chinese automaker, Hebei Zhongxing Automobile Manufacture Company, expects to begin exports to Mexico by September, said Mr. Scheinman. Zhongxing is a regional producer in Baoding, in the western Chinese province of Hebei, that produces mostly pickups.
The company’s Web site reports that it has the capacity to produce 110,000 vehicles. But Michael J. Dunne, vice president of international operations for J. D. Power & Associates, wrote recently in The Detroit News that the company was expected to sell just 25,000 vehicles in China this year.
Exports to the United States will not start until at least the middle of next year, said Mr. Scheinman, after engineers at the Baoding plant bring the vehicles in line with American safety and emissions standards.
The United States auto industry has been speculating about when the first Chinese cars will crack the market. A plan to introduce cars produced by the Chinese automaker Chery Automobile foundered, said David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
“When you look at what’s required to compete in terms of emissions and safety standards, it is incredibly difficult,” Mr. Cole said. “Talk is pretty cheap and doing it is very difficult.”
American, Japanese and European automakers all export to the United States from plants in Mexico.
“Mexico is a very good manufacturing base,” Mr. Cole said of Zhongxing’s plans to build a plant in the United States. “It has good skilled workers and relatively low costs. But would the vehicles really be ready for prime time?”