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It has been rumored that Geely will cooperate with Daimler to produce the electric version of the Smart car, but now the news shows that the cooperation between Geely and Daimler is far more than the electric version of the Smart, Geely may want to take 50% of the shares of Smart!

Daimler plans to sell a 50 per cent stake in its subsidiary Smart to Geely, its largest shareholder, the Financial Times reported on March 27th. People familiar with the matter said the sale of a stake in the Smart unit would be confirmed before the Shanghai auto show in April.

News of Daimler's sale of 50 per cent of the Smart brand to Geely has spread rapidly in China, while Geely and Daimler have been silent on the matter, but the domestic media online car market has learned from Geely insiders that Geely will formally sign a contract with Daimler's headquarters in Hangzhou on March 28, 2019, each of which will hold a 50 per cent stake in the smart brand.

On February 24 last year, Geely officially completed the acquisition and became Daimler's largest shareholder, and then the two sides cooperated on high-end chauffeured car travel services, but as Daimler's largest single shareholder, it was obvious that Geely could not satisfy the ambitious Geely. Earlier, Bloomberg reported in February that Geely was interested in working with Daimler to produce an electric version of Smart. The future electric version of Smart is likely to be produced and developed in China. At the same time, Yang Xueliang, vice president of Geely Automobile Group, also confirmed this statement that Daimler is in talks with Geely to expand the scope of cooperation, and now it seems that Geely Daimler's cooperation may be deeper than the domestic electric version of Smart.

The Smart brand has been losing money since it was controlled by Daimler in 2000, with a cumulative loss of about 4 billion euros. During this period, Smart also tried sports cars, compact cars and four-door cars, but all ended badly. In terms of sales, the peak of Smart is the record sales of 150000 vehicles set in 2002. Last year, the global sales of the Smart brand was 129000, down 4.6% from the same period last year. By contrast, the global sales of BMW's MINI brand, which is similar to Smart, reached 361500.

Germany's Business Daily reported that Daimler is losing patience with the losses of its mini-car brand and will decide on the Smart brand by the end of this year. "even Opel is profitable and we have a lot to think about, but a decision will be made within this year," said a Daimler executive. If we can cooperate deeply with Geely to develop and produce the electric version in China, the Smart brand will still have great achievements in China's new energy market.

Last year, Mercedes-Benz also proposed that there would be only two pure electric SUV and pure electric cars before 2020, and a total of 10 pure electric cars are expected to be launched at 2022. And Mercedes-Benz expects pure electric car sales to account for another 15%, 25%, by 2025, meaning that at least 75% of products will still be conventional fuel-powered or hybrid. The only thing that moves faster is the Smart product line, which is more suitable for cities and is expected to be fully electrified in Europe and the United States by 2020.

In July last year, Great Wall and BMW formally signed a joint venture contract, the two sides will set up a joint venture "beam car", the future beam car company will produce MINI electric cars, promote the electric brand MINI. As Daimler's small car brand, Daimler has also been planning to electrify Smart domestically, but there has been no substantial progress in the "smart domestic" project cooperated by Daimler BAIC in the past two years. Now it seems that Smart domestic project Daimler is more interested in Geely, if Geely takes a 50% stake in the Smart brand, with Geely's executive power, Smart domestic is really not far away.

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