Electric Car by Daimler-BYD to Hit Market in 2014

http://www.gochinaauto.com/modules/article/view.article.php/1217

The connection between China and Europe is becoming more and more strong and diversified especially in auto field. When Volkswagen is passing milestones one by one in China, Daimler and BMW can not wait and see any longer. “China is the future” This is the common sense in auto industry and everyone wants a ticket in the fast train.
Even the organization is a mass, Beijing auto show had the eyes from everywhere on the planet. It was not only a show for cars. Various people come and go with various purposes.
April 23th, When Dr. Dieter Zetsche arrived at the big event, his first stop was not the Mercedes-Benz booth, even he knew Daimler invested quite a lot in the event and the huge booth. He directly came to the booth of BYD. There Dr. Zetsche and Mr. Wang Chuanfu, Chairman of BYD debut in the auto show in frond of BYD’s L3, I3, I6 and S6 models. According to local media, Dr. Zetsche showed great interest on those models.
But not mentioned why.
The head of Daimler AG is going to have his 57th birthday in China at that time, but he was still energetically when sitting with local media. Dr. Zetsche mentioned several times the name of BYD when talking about auto market of China.
“Daimler and BYD are planning to build a joint venture in China to develop electric cars. The joint venture will build a new brand for the cars, not BYD nor Mercedes-Benz.” Dr. Zetsche said that “In terms of sales/service network, the joint venture will choose some of BYD’s high quality dealers to do that”
In this March’s Genevese Auto show, Daimler AG and BYD Motor signed MoU for the cooperation. According to the MoU, two parties will work together to develop, produce and sell electric cars under a new brand. This is the first time one China independent auto maker to export technology in a joint venture with a global auto maker.
And for the first time the counter-party is Daimler.
The joint venture will be settled in China and a R&D center will also be build for it. Daimler will offer its know-how on vehicle building and BYD will offer its expertise on vehicle battery.
“For the cooperation time being, we need to build a R&D center. Daimler will provide some of our technologies on car manufacturing and BYD to its battery technology. Then both parties will work together to develop E-cars for China market. This is quite different from the cooperation before by Daimler.” Dr. Zetsche said, “In the past 5 years, we build in Beijing a R&D center, we will add some Chinese elements into the car we are selling in China. Besides we are also planning to enhance the Fujian joint venture’s R&D capacity.”

“We will make a Quality Control Manual to produce the electric cars in China, and then develop and produce the electric car in line with the Manual. At present we have send about ten people to the BYD project. As for the possibility to implement BYD batteries to Mercedes-Benz vehicles, Why not?” When asked to make some comments on BYD’s battery technology, Dr. Zetsche said “So far we only have a look at the BYD technologies, and we are sure this is an advantage of BYD. But Daimler also has car battery technologies and Hybrid as well. If some day the battery from BYD can meet the requirements of Mercedes-Benz, it’s possible to use it in Mercedes-Benz vehicles, but we are not talking about this topic.”
Zetsche also told local media that, both parties are preparing tons of documents and contract for the final agreement. But the agreement will be signed in near future. The new electric car is only for China market, but there is still possibility to export the products to other regions. When asked about the timeline for starts to sell, Dr. Zetsche said 2014.

Besides the cooperation with BYD, Daimler is also building connection with Renault-Nissan alliance. April 7th Daimler signed agreement with Renault-Nissan alliance for strategic cooperation. According to the agreement Renault-Nissan alliance will have 3.1% of Daimler’s share and Daimler will have 3.1% of the shares of Renault and Nissan respectively. If this is an alliance, it is now the third biggest player right after Volkswagen-SUZUKI and Toyota.
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