Nissan Motor Co last week unveiled a plan to create an non-Nissan car brand in China with local partner Dongfeng Motor Corp.

The joint venture, Dongfeng Motor Co Ltd, plans to make passenger cars under the all-new Venucia brand that will be first released in a series of concept and production cars at the end of the year.

The first Venucia model will be put on sale during the first half of 2012, the joint venture said.

The program makes Nissan the second foreign carmaker in China after Honda Motor Co to create an all-new brand without its parent company badge.

Honda announced in 2009 that it would produce the Everus-brand high-end cars in China with its joint venture partner Guangzhou Automobile Corp.

The two Japanese carmakers' new-brand campaign signals hyper-competition in China's vehicle market - the world's biggest - in the near future.

There will be more than 90 brands and 300 locally made models in China's passenger vehicle market contesting for buyers by 2015, according to market research firm JD Power.

Their new-brand plans also play to the Chinese regulators' expectations for foreign carmakers to strengthen new product research and development in China, instead of only assembling their own-brand passenger cars here.

All of Sino-foreign passenger car joint ventures are now offering foreign-badge models to Chinese customers.

Nissan's joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Corp are making the Japanese carmaker's Teana mid-sized sedan, Sylphy and Tiida compact car, March subcompact and Qashqai crossover, Livina MPV, and X-Trail and Paladin SUVs.

In the first half of this year, the joint venture's passenger car sales surged by 47 percent year-on-year to 330,776 units, ranking No 4 in China.

The company expects to sell more than 600,000 passenger cars this year, up from 500,000 units in 2009.

It is building a new 300,000-unit passenger car plant with an investment of 5 billion yuan in southern city of Guangzhou. The new factory, to be operational in 2012, will hike the joint venture's annual production capacity to 1 million passenger cars.

Since the tie-up was established in 2003, it has moved a total of more than 2 million cars.

The joint venture is also building Dongfeng-brand commercial vehicles.

Overall vehicle sales in China totaled 9.02 million units in the first half, up 47.67 percent from a year ago, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Full-year vehicles sales in China are predicted to surpass 16 million units, up from 14.7 million units last year.

(China Daily)