Tag: Karsan

The Karsan van, with a retractable wheelchair ramp, got a lot of support in Brooklyn when the company promised to build a factory in Sunset Park.

By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

The Karsan V1, an oblong Turkish van vying to become the exclusive vehicle of the New York City taxi fleet, has features that would make a Crown Victoria weep: London-style jump seats; a moon roof for panoramic views; even a pledge to build the cars in Brooklyn. (The Crown Vic, the fleet’s old mainstay, was made in Canada.)

“How can we possibly reject this proposal?” Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, said at a rally he organized on Sunday to support the van.

The Bloomberg administration is set to present a few reasons why.

The Karsan van has been rejected by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, according to a city official who has been informed of the decision, and who insisted on anonymity because it had not been made public. The rejection came after a review raised concerns about whether the Turkish company, untested in the American market, could reliably execute the high-concept product it had designed.

That leaves the city’s Taxi of Tomorrow competition — which will award a contract for the next decade’s yellow cabs — with two contenders. Both finalists were submitted by more established automakers and are less aesthetically distinct: the Ford Transit Connect and the Nissan NV200 vans. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is expected to announce the selection this week.

Karsan’s bid attracted far more attention than its competitors’, earning international headlines as a stylish new look for the traditional New York cab. Its makers hired Rubenstein Associates, the public relations firm, to supervise a media campaign, and the vehicle attracted strong support by advocates for the disabled because of its retractable wheelchair ramp.

But an analysis commissioned by the city concluded that Karsan would present the “highest risk” to the taxi industry if chosen for the 10-year contract. The report, prepared by an automotive consultant, Ricardo Inc., put it bluntly: While Karsan had demonstrated “the will and technical capability” to build its proposed taxi, the company was “a new manufacturer, with a new manufacturing paradigm, not familiar with the U.S. regulatory framework, with no current sales, service or support infrastructure” in the United States, according to the report, excerpts of which were obtained by The New York Times.

The consultant appeared concerned about whether Karsan, which has rarely tried to design and build a new vehicle from scratch, had “fully evaluated the risks and countermeasures required to ensure that their product will deliver and maintain the same level of maturity as that of their competitors over the life of the contract.”

Jan Nahum, the executive director of Karsan, said in a statement that he was shocked that he had not been directly notified of the decision, and he described the premature release of the report as inappropriate. “Furthermore,” he added, “we were unaware of any such report, and the concerns reportedly raised in it have never been expressed to us.”

Karsan said last month that it was prepared to build a plant in Sunset Park, potentially creating hundreds of jobs. The announcement was hailed by some city politicians, including several who spoke at Mr. Markowitz’s event outside Brooklyn Borough Hall on Sunday.

“Imagine the rebirth of solid, union, middle-income jobs,” Mr. Markowitz said. And Julie Kushner, a United Auto Workers director who also spoke at the rally, said Karsan’s selection would “represent the first auto assembly jobs in the city for decades.”

While Karsan has been eliminated, city officials are said to have encountered drawbacks in all three finalists.

Ford’s submission, for its existing Transit Connect van, was viewed early on as problematic and uninspired, and some taxi officials were taken aback to see the city include the car as a finalist.

At one point, the Ford entry was considered “a fallback” that could be picked if other, more exciting options did not pan out, according to two individuals with direct knowledge of the city’s deliberations who requested anonymity because the discussions were supposed to be private.

City Hall officials would not comment on internal deliberations. But Mayor Bloomberg appeared to allude to Karsan’s perceived problems on his radio program last week.

“You’ve got to look at how much experience companies have had in building cars,” he said on Friday.

Juliet Linderman contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 2, 2011, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: In Contest for New York’s New Taxis, Turkish Entry, the Karsan, Is Rejected.

via Karsan, From Turkey, Is Rejected as New York Taxi – NYTimes.com.

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that Japanese automobile company Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY, 7201.TO) had won a 10-year, $1 billion contract to provide thousands of taxis to the city beginning in about two years.

The other “Taxi of Tomorrow” finalists were Ford Motor Co. (F) and Turkish car maker Karsan Otomotiv Sanayii ve Ticaret AS (KARSN.IS). At a press conference here, Bloomberg said none of the interested bidders proposed making their cars in the U.S., at least at first, so the move shouldn’t be seen as choosing a foreign company over a domestic one.

via Nissan Wins $1B Pact To Provide NYC Taxis Beginning In Late 2013 – WSJ.com.

By Yeliz Candemir

ISTANBUL (MarketWatch) — Turkish car maker Karsan Otomotiv Sanayii ve Ticaret AS [KARSN.IS] saw its shares fall sharply Monday after a report that the firm failed to secure a contract to produce a new fleet of New York taxis.

Karsan shares were trading more than 6% lower at 1200 GMT, after the New York Times reported that it had seen documents from the New York Taxi Commission confirming that Karsan had failed in its bid to win a tender to produce New York’s “Taxi of Tomorrow.”

According to the New York Times, the rejection came after a review raised concerns about whether the Turkish company, untested in the American market, could reliably execute the high-concept product it had designed.

In a statement to the Istanbul Stock Exchange, the Bursa-based automaker said it hadn’t yet received any official statement from the New York Taxi Commission. Turkey’s industry ministry, responsible for automotive policy, also said it had received no news on the bid.

The fall in Karsan’s share price came despite an overall rise in the benchmark Istanbul stock exchange as global markets rallied on news that U.S. special forces had killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

Karsan, Ford Motor Co. [F] and Nissan Motor Co. [NSANY] have been competing to design a new model for New York’s 26,500 cabs in the next 10 years, including an initial 13,000 vehicles.

 

* Competing with Ford, Nissan to make NYC’s next taxi

* Would reverse trend of exporting manufacturing jobs

By Daniel Trotta

NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) – Turkish manufacturer Karsan has promised to assemble cars in Brooklyn if it wins New York’s “Taxi of Tomorrow” concession, potentially returning auto making to the city for the first time in a century.

Karsan is a finalist along with Nissan and Ford to build a taxi cab that would replace the 16 models now authorized, a contract estimated to be worth more than $1 billion over 10 years.

The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission will announce the winner “in the very near future,” a spokesman said.

Karsan’s bid had gained notice mostly because of its design for a transparent roof for better sight-seeing and a ramp that would make it wheelchair accessible off the factory floor. The Ford and Nissan models are not wheelchair accessible, the commission said.

Putting an auto assembly plant in Brooklyn would be a step toward addressing a lament commonly heard throughout the recession of 2007-2009: the United States has lost too many manufacturing jobs.

The proposal to build Karsan taxis in Brooklyn was first reported by the New York Daily News.

“New York City was the manufacturing capital of America in 1960. There hasn’t been an industrial project that I can think of since then,” said William Wachtel, president of Karsan USA.

The cars would be made with union labor that would be cost effective because of efficiencies in the Karsan assembly process, Wachtel said.

In 1900 there were six factories with 500 employees making cars in New York City, mostly electric or steam driven, according to historian Kenneth T. Jackson, editor of “The Encyclopedia of New York City.”

“By 1916, the internal combustion engine had won the battle, and so far as I know New York manufacture had ended,” Jackson said.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has become an enthusiastic advocate for the Karsan bid, though the decision rests with the commission.

“Here would be something novel: a foreign manufacturer, Turkish, actually manufacturing right here, putting Brooklynites and New Yorkers to work,” Markowitz said. “That would say something that the rest of the world might want to (notice) very carefully.”

Wachtel said the plant would be able to build 10,000 units a year, compared with the 3,000 per year needed for New York City taxis.

The excess would be sold as taxis in other cities and for the U.S. retail market, which requires 16,000 wheelchair-accessible cars a year, Wachtel said. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Michelle Nichols)

via Turkey’s Karsan offers to build taxis in Brooklyn By Reuters.