Establishment of Mercedes and Geely’s joint venture
Xian: Mercedes and Geely have joined hands to build a “Premium and Intelligent” smart car for the masses in China. The agreement bounds both companies to invest a total of 2.7 billion yuan ($388.8 million).
During the annual event EV100 in Beijing, a senior official from the German plant has revealed that Mercedes-Benz and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in the Chinese city of Xian are committed to making excellent smart cars in the near future. At full capacity, the venture will be rolling out over 150,000+ vehicles annually. “Like Mercedes-Benz, Smart is a Daimler marque and for reference, Smart sold over 116,000 vehicles in 2019 alone.
On the other hand, Daimler’s Executive Vice President in China Leng Yan further added, “At the time that the venture, which will be based in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo, will have manufacturing capacity in China and sales operations in China and Germany.”
Geely is building car plants in Xian as confirmed by the construction bidding document on their website. Aside from the latest venture, Daimler is also a partner with BAIC group making premium Benz cars in Beijing along with trucks with BAIC’s unit Beiqi Foton Motor.
As of now, the launch of a new model in unknown however the new generation of smart vehicles will be designed by the worldwide Mercedes-Benz Design network and developed by the Geely global engineering network. The company also has a new global CEO Tong Xiangbei who has a healthy 20 years of experience in the automotive industry. He is known to work with multiple renowned OEMs both in the US and China. During his stay at Smart, he will manage all operations relating to the brand including sales, marketing, R&D, production and after-sales.
Ola Källenius (Chairman of Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz AG), told the press that all the regulatory approvals have been received and this venture has been under work for several months now. This gives them a headstart to bring the next generation of zero-emission smart electric cars to the Chinese and global markets. He went further to say:
“We look forward to continuing our collaboration to bring desirable products and services to customers around the world.”