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Recently, BMW held a NEXTGen Future Summit in Munich, Germany, and the BMW Group announced that its electric vehicle strategy would be accelerated by two years.

At the summit, BMW changed "Future Expressway 2025" to "Future Expressway 2023", which increased its speed for two years. Prior to this, at the annual meeting of BMW Group held in Germany, BMW Group Chairman Kruger mentioned BMW's three-step strategy: "2016-2018 is the first stage, 2019-2021 is the second stage, and 2022-2025 is the third stage. "

According to reports, BMW plans to sell more than 500000 new energy vehicles worldwide by the end of 2019. For now, BMW is the top seller of luxury new energy vehicles in China and around the world. In 2018, BMW sold more than 142600 new energy vehicles worldwide, exceeding its target of 140000 vehicles. Among them, more than 23000 vehicles are sold in China.

The products developed a few years ago have been put on the market, which will boost BMW to achieve fast running. At present, BMW Group has the richest new energy product line, and at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show, BMW demonstrated new plug-in hybrids of the BMW 3 Series, the BMW 7 Series, the BMW X5 and the BMW X3. This summer, the BMW 5 series and BMW 2 series sports station wagons will be available as plug-in hybrids, and next year, the BMW X1 and BMW 3 series travel versions will be upgraded with plug-in hybrids.

Mr Kruger said that within two years, the number of pure electric production models would be increased to five: in addition to the BMW i3, which has sold more than 150000 so far, the all-electric MINI will also start production at the Oxford plant in the UK this year; the all-electric BMW iX3 will start production at the Shenyang plant in China in 2020; and the BMW iNEXT and BMW i4 will start production at Germany's Dingerfen plant and Munich plant respectively in 2021.

China is the most important market for the success and realization of BMW electrification, so it attaches great importance to the landing of electrification in China. In order to better undertake and rely on the promotion of future electrified products, we are also willing to cooperate with China's Ningde era in the field of batteries. We will build a battery production base in Germany as soon as possible to provide batteries for the BMWiNEXT and BMWi4 models that will be put into production in 2021.

For now, we will focus on the development of power battery vehicles or plug-in hybrid vehicles, and more attention will be paid to the development of hydrogen fuel cells after 2025. For the planning after 2025, we must start to plan ahead now, especially in terms of research and development. At the same time, we have cooperated with Toyota, a strategic partner, in the area of fuel cells.

We are committed to carrying out high-level R & D and innovation with our partners, especially in China. It can be said that we are in the forefront of the world in the construction and establishment of customer ecosystem. In China, we have established a docking between the ecosystem of consumers and customer groups. In terms of ecosystem and software system research and development, we focus on win-win cooperation with local Chinese partners, including working with Baidu on the Apollo program, carrying out data sharing and collection, obtaining timeshare and high-end online car-hailing licenses, and obtaining self-driving road test licenses in Shanghai.

Of course, in this regard, we will take a better way to balance investment. That is to carry out strategic cooperation. In the areas of electric travel, travel services and automation, we have been strategically working with enterprises suitable for cooperation, so that we can share the costs of production and research and development.

At this summit, eight blockbuster new cars are not absolute protagonists. BMW's next-generation transportation technology and concepts; accelerating the expansion of electric products to achieve the layout of 25 new energy models two years ahead of schedule; and all topics related to "D+ACES", such as self-driving, Smart Internet, electrification and services, are all very interesting content of this summit. In fact, many car companies should really learn from BMW and seek a new way of communication that suits them, which is conducive to the long-term development of car companies.

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