Tata Motors struggles to form China JV for JLR with Chery Automobile

After two months of talks, Tata Motors is still struggling to form a joint venture with China's state-owned car producer Chery Automobile for manufacturing and distributing the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) range of cars in the world's biggest car market.

The newly appointed CEO of Tata Motors, Carl-Peter Forster, said over the weekend at an auto conference in Shanghai that Tata Motors-owned JLR wants to find a partner in China "as soon as possible" to manufacture and market vehicles, reported The Wall Street Journal yesterday.

Quoting Forester, the paper said that Tata Motors is in "good discussions" with a Chinese auto maker but declined to name the potential partner.

But Tata Motors has been in discussion since August 2010 with Chery Automobile, for initially assembling Land Rover models and later for a joint production of both the Jaguar and Land Rover models. (See: Tata Motors talks to China's Chery Auto for JLR manufacturing JV)

Founded in 1997 as Anhui Chery Automobile Co by five of Wuhu, Anhui province state owned investment companies, but Chinese media had widely reported in July 2010 that Chery would soon be privatisied.

Chery is the largest independent Chinese auto manufacturer and one of the fastest growing in the world. It possesses a full set of production and R&D units, such as factories, engine plants, transmission Factory, automotive engineering and research institute, planning and design institute and testing technology centre.