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Today, Geely Motor and Daimler Group officially announced that with the approval of relevant regulatory authorities, the smart brand global joint venture "Smart Motor Motor Co., Ltd." (smart Automobile Co., Ltd.) formed by the two sides was formally established to jointly operate and promote the transformation and upgrading of the smart brand around the world, which means that Smart models will be jointly developed by both sides and produced and sold globally by domestic production.

It is understood that the registered capital of the joint venture is 5.4 billion yuan, and the two sides will each contribute 2.7 billion yuan. Mercedes-Benz will mainly obtain the corresponding shares in the form of smart brand investment, and the board of directors will be composed of six members, with three appointed by each side. The joint venture company is headquartered in Hangzhou Bay New area of Ningbo and has set up marketing centers in China and Germany respectively.

According to the company's plan, the new smart pure electric model built by both sides will be designed by the global design department of Mercedes-Benz, while the global R & D center of Geely Holdings will be responsible for engineering research and development and will be produced in the new factory in China, which will be put on the market and sold worldwide in 2022.

The plan was first publicly announced by both sides in March last year and became a major focus of the auto industry in 2019, when it was announced in the presence of Dr. Zetsche, the former Daimler global CEO. Now that Dr. Zetsche has abdicated, the joint venture is still "on schedule", which means Geely is once again exploring high-end electric cars.

In the past two decades, Sino-foreign joint ventures have carried out joint ventures in fuel models, while there is little cooperation in new energy. With the liberalization of the approval of new energy vehicle manufacturing projects, many domestic car companies have opened the road of cooperation. There used to be BYD and Mercedes-Benz companies, and now there is Geely and Daimler's smart motor company.

Not long ago, BMW also set up a joint venture with Great Wall Motor in China, Beam Automobile, to jointly promote pure electric MINI models, and recently announced that it had received a business license issued by Zhangjiagang City Market Supervision Bureau. The cooperation between BMW and Great Wall further confirms the importance of cooperation between Daimler and Geely.

The smart brand, which was born in 1998, has the Mercedes-Benz gene and has accumulated a certain popularity and reputation in the global market, but the profit situation of the minority is still not optimistic. According to the data, global sales totaled 129000 vehicles in 2018, down 4.6% from the same period last year, with a cumulative loss of about 4 billion euros over the years.

Although Daimler introduced it and made it domestically, China tends to be the second largest sales market of Smart, which will reduce costs or increase sales again to make a profit. However, at present, the performance of the domestic new energy vehicle market is still not satisfactory, since the subsidy has declined in May compared with the same period last year, and the range has further expanded.

In the face of the declining new energy market, there is still more uncertainty about whether the domestic smart of pure electricity can get a piece of the domestic market in the future.

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