Conti – Low Cost Cars & Emerging Markets a Strong Growth Area

Continental’s chief technical officer has expressed confidence that the strong global demand in the low cost car segment for vehicles such as Tata’s Nano will lead to an expansion of the company’s research and development capacities in emerging markets. Dr. Karl-Thomas Neumann commented during an interview with dpa news agency that Conti will substantially expand its R&D capacities in Asia and South America to meet the growth of low-cost car segments in these regions. The segments will be profitable, he believes, in spite of the obvious pressure to minimise production costs.

Increasingly, it is low cost vehicles in the emerging markets such as India, China and Russia that drives growth in the global vehicle industry, and Continental predicts that by 2017 around 14 million cars with a retail price below 10,000 euros will be sold each year.