AISIN GROUP declared an investment to strengthen its production capacity of automatic transmission through the establishment of a joint-venture between AISIN AW, a large automatic transmission producer and Chinese companies, Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group with the commencement of the production in 2020.  In addition, there was a plan of additional transmission production at the plant of AISIN AW in Hebei with an investment worth 90 billion yen. However, the investment of AISIN could confront a risk since the current automatic transmission model was not placed in the EV, leading to a possibility of the demand decrease in the future. 

AISIN AW, Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group, and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group had a plant construction plan in Zhejiang, China,  in 2018,  which will lead to the registered capital of 117 million USD (13,000 million yen) of which 60% held by AISIN and 40% held by the two Chinese companies. There was also another plan for the 70 billion yen of investment in the future to produce the 6-speed automatic transmission for front-wheel drive vehicles. 

As for the plant in Hebei, AISIN SEIKI had joined the investment of 2 billion yen which had the production commencement in August 2019 and had a plan to commence the new production of the manual transmission in the future.   
In Q1/ 2018, AISIN GROUP had a total production capacity of the automatic transmission of 9.8 million units, increased from the previous quarter by 13% and grew twice the forecast capacity after the Lehman Shock. As a result, AISIN had to have a plan to put more money into the previous investment plan of 100 billion yen in 2017 as well as to target the 25% increase of the production capacity which was equivalent to 12.5 million units in 2020. However, it was still uncertain if there would be another adjustment.   

Nonetheless, the NEV policy of the Chinese government, which would be effective in 2019, would cause the automobile industry in China to shift its direction to EV. Mizuho Bank had expected that in 2030, the EV sales in China, Japan, and the US would be accounting for 29%, 6%, and 4%, respectively. 

In addition, AISIN SEIKI added an opinion toward the automatic transmission investment as a risk and its establishment of the joint-venture with the Chinese manufacturers  was a preparation for the slowdown of its automatic transmission market which had happened in the past 10 years.  

However, AISIN still had other product developments such as automatic transmissions and motors for hybrid vehicles. Therefore, the investment of the automatic transmission could be a foundation of the product development for the EV in the future.