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After "Great Wall MINI","Geely Smart" is coming?

Since Geely officially acquired Daimler as the first shareholder, there has been constant news that Geely Daimler and Daimler may cooperate in the field of electric vehicles, and now foreign media have disclosed that the two sides are currently negotiating on this. Bloomberg reported that Geely intends to cooperate with Daimler to produce an electric version of Smart cars, which are currently under negotiation, and future electric versions of Smart cars may be produced and developed in China.

On February 24 last year, Geely Automobile officially completed the acquisition and became Daimler's largest shareholder, and then the two sides cooperated on high-end car travel services, but as Daimler's largest single shareholder, Geely obviously hopes that the two sides have more cooperation, and cooperation in electric vehicles may be more able to satisfy Geely's "appetite".

Recently Geely has set up a power battery production company in Wuhan and won the passenger car manufacturing land, with a total investment of 10 billion yuan. In addition to the disclosed genuine brand "Lotus sports car"(Lotus Lotus) in Wuhan for domestic production, temporarily unknown Geely Wuhan factory specific production information, but according to the announcement issued by Hubei Province Development and Reform Commission, Zhejiang Geely Automobile Co., Ltd. in Wuhan City Wuhan branch annual output of 150,000 passenger cars project, including basic passenger cars (including traditional fuel vehicles and pure electric vehicles, hybrid models) and other types of passenger cars.

On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz also proposed last year that there will be only two pure electric SUVs and pure electric cars by 2020, and it is expected that a total of 10 pure electric vehicles will not be available until 2022. And Mercedes expects pure electric vehicles to account for another 15 - 25 percent of sales by 2025, meaning that at least 75 percent of its products will still be fuel-powered or hybrid. The only thing moving faster is the Smart product line, which is more suitable for urban mobility and is expected to be fully electrified in Europe and the US market by 2020.

In July last year, Great Wall and BMW formally signed a joint venture contract, the two sides will establish a joint venture company "beam car", the future beam car company will produce MINI electric car, promote MINI brand electric. As a small car brand owned by Daimler, Daimler has also been planning to make smart electric.

As early as the 2017 Frankfurt Auto Show, Daimler announced that its smart will be transformed into a brand focusing on electric vehicles, and gradually realize the electrification plan of all models in major markets around the world by 2020. However, it has been rumored that Daimler has plans to produce electric smart in China. Even once in the past two years, it has been rumored that Daimler has discussed this matter with BAIC New Energy. Daimler intends to set up a joint venture company to implement production capacity. It is not placed on the production line of BAIC New Energy, nor is it intended to be placed in the product sequence of Beijing Benz.

However, there has been no substantial progress in the "smart domestic" project of Daimler Beiqi cooperation in the past two years. Now, according to foreign media reports, it is known that the Smart domestic partner of Daimler electric version may be Geely.

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