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Affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, multinational car companies around the world have been hit unprecedentedly. Even Daimler, one of the most profitable companies, had previously been strapped for cash because of the epidemic and planned to sell factories with overcapacity, which is the exclusive plant of Smart.

According to foreign media reports, Daimler recently announced that it will sell the Smart plant in Hambach, France in the near future, in order to adjust the current overproduction problem. "the economic impact of the epidemic is creating new opportunities, in which case we are optimizing our global production network and we plan to start selling Hambach plants," according to Ola K ä llenius, Daimler's chief executive.

However, with regard to Daimler's decision, the French finance minister solemnly called for Daimler to ensure that it opened up all its options and opted for an ecological transformation, including the preservation of the plant.

It is understood that the factory was established in 1997 and has always been the exclusive factory of Smart. It now has about 1600 employees and has produced more than 2.2 million Smart Fortwo vehicles. And in 2018, when Daimler's former CEO Zetsche met with French President Macron, he promised to invest 500 million euros in the Hambach plant to produce a compact electric car under Mercedes's new EQ electric sub brand and a battery-powered derivative car from Smart ForTwo. However, due to the impact of the epidemic, Daimler is clearly unable to maintain this commitment. And the latest news shows that EQA will be put into production at the Rastat plant.

Kang Linsong also said that the factory will not stop production immediately because the Smart cars made in China will not be available until 2022. In early January, Mercedes-Benz and Geely formed a joint venture, Smart Motor, after Daimler said last year that it would produce the next generation of smart electric vehicles through a joint venture with Geely.

According to the plan, the smart electric car will be designed by Mercedes-Benz's global design department, and Geely Holdings Global R & D Center will be responsible for engineering research and development, production in Chinese factories, and plans to start production and sale worldwide in 2022. In addition, the Mercedes-Benz EQB is also likely to be produced at Daimler's Beijing plant and exported to Europe.

As a result, Daimler will continue to produce existing smart models at the Hambach plant in France and the Novemesto plant in Slovenia until the launch of new models in 2022. This means that smart's overseas factories will be closed one after another by 2022. At that time, China will be in charge of smart's engineering R & D, production and other businesses, which to a certain extent represents the "transfer" of smart's global headquarters to China.

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