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In January this year, Geely formally signed a joint venture with Daimler to launch more domestic models based on the smart brand. With the continuous progress of bilateral cooperation, new progress has been made in the cooperation plan between the two sides recently. The first model will be launched in SUV, and will be based on Geely SEA vast architecture, the future brand will also adopt the direct sales model.

A few days ago, the smart brand co-operated by Geely Mercedes-Benz held a new retail partner conference with the theme of "Gravity Project" in Shanghai, at which smart announced for the first time to the industry that it would adopt a D2C direct sales agency business model with "user-centered and digital-driven" as its core concept in China. It is reported that this is a sales model using agents, which means that dealers are only responsible for selling cars as agents, which can ensure that the prices obtained by users are absolutely uniform.

At the conference, Mr. Yi Han, head of marketing in China of the global joint venture company of smart brand, also mentioned: "what is different from the traditional dealer cooperation model is that the smart brand will have the right to sell, own vehicle inventory, ensure a unified, transparent and stable price system, and provide vehicle delivery services directly to users. Partners only need to lighten the investment and are responsible for providing users with sales experience and after-sales service. " In this way, we can achieve a win-win situation among brands, partners and consumers. "

In addition, the first concept car under the smart brand will be launched worldwide in September, and the first production car is the pure electric SUV, which will be officially launched next year. Earlier, foreign media reported that smart was the first to launch two new cars codenamed HX11 and HC11. The first model, codenamed HX11, is expected to locate a small pure electric SUV with a length of more than 4 meters and the same size as the MINI COUNTRYMAN. This will also become the largest smart in history, and its mileage will exceed that of 400km.

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

In fact, the plan for a joint venture between Zhejiang Geely holding Group and Mercedes-Benz AG, first announced by both sides in March last year, once became a major focus in the automotive industry in 2019, when it was announced in the presence of Dr. Zetsche, a former Daimler global CEO, that now Dr. Zetsche has abdicated and the joint venture is still "on schedule", which means Geely has made a new exploration of high-end electric cars.

It is worth noting that prior to this, Daimler also reported that it would gradually stop production of overseas factories such as the smart factory in Hambach in France and the new Mesto factory in Slovenia, which means that China will gradually become master of all the engineering R & D, production and other business of smart, which to a certain extent represents the "transfer" of smart's global headquarters to China. Daimler will only continue to operate overseas factories until the launch of an all-new model in 2022.

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