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Zhongtai Ford is a joint venture brand formed by Zhongtai Motor and Ford Motor in November 2017. according to the agreement at that time, the first new car of the joint venture company will go into production in September this year, but it is only two months before it goes into production. So far, there has been no substantial progress on the project. It is understood that the name of the company has not passed the formal examination and approval of the National Development and Reform Commission, and it is still unknown whether the production can be carried out normally.

However, Zhongtai Ford is not alone. Another earlier Sino-foreign joint venture, the Jianghuai Volkswagen, whose first model, the Sihao E20X, was unveiled in May last year, but more than a year later, the car has not been on the market.

Since the establishment of JAC Volkswagen in 2016, there has been a trend of joint ventures in China, and these brands are different from the joint ventures established a decade ago. These enterprises are mainly concentrated in the field of new energy vehicles, in addition to JAC Volkswagen. There are Great Wall BMW, Geely Daimler, Jiangling Renault and so on. Behind the establishment of these enterprises is generally believed to be to deal with China's "double points" policy. Through joint ventures with independent brands with rapid development of new energy in China, we can gain more double points of new energy. However, at present, none of these enterprises has really developed well.

In November 2017, Zhongtai and Ford signed a joint venture agreement. The two sides plan to set up a joint venture company with 50 per cent shareholding. The total investment of the new joint venture company is 5 billion yuan to build new pure electric passenger car products. The factory capacity is planned to be 300000 vehicles. Production is scheduled to start in September 2019.

Fu Li de, president of Foton Motors, said when signing the contract with Zhongtai Motors that the joint venture would be approved within 2018 and put into production in September 2019, but it is now in the third quarter of 2019, less than two months before the start of production, but the joint venture project has not yet been approved.

Zhong Tai Ford's joint venture project does not only establish a joint venture company. In September 2018, Ford Intelligent Travel Co., Ltd. and Zhongtai signed a joint venture agreement with 50% of the investment to form Zhong Tai Ford Intelligent Travel Technology Co., Ltd.

According to Zhongtai Automobile internal employees, the current Zhongtai Ford joint venture project is mainly Zhongtai automobile management, Ford has no substantive investment, the joint venture project is almost at a standstill. It is understood that in May 2018, the whole vehicle business of Zhongtai New Energy was transferred to Zhongtai Ford Cooperation Co., Ltd. Zhongtai New Energy will be engaged in the research and development, manufacturing and sales of new energy vehicle parts, and will no longer engage in the related business of pure electric passenger vehicles.

In view of this, Zhongtai Motor's investment is still very large, but Ford Motor, as another joint venture party, does not care much about it, and Ford rarely mentions it publicly in public.

Coincidentally, Jianghuai Volkswagen, a new energy joint venture between Jianghuai Motor and Volkswagen, is now gradually silent.

It is understood that in September 2016, Jianghuai and Volkswagen signed a cooperation agreement, the joint venture project was approved by the Development and Reform Commission in May 2017, and the joint venture agreement and investment agreement were formally signed in June 2017. the new energy project was then started, and in December 2017, Jianghuai Volkswagen was formally established, the joint venture brand Sihao was released in April 2018, and the receiving product Sihao E20X was released in May 2018. It can be said that the development of JAC Volkswagen has been relatively smooth along the way. It only took more than a year from the preparation of the company to the offline of the product.

However, more than a year later, the car is still not online. Volkswagen CEO Dis said at the 2019 Volkswagen Investment Conference that some technical parameters of the E20X are still lagging behind the expected standards and are currently being adjusted and tested. But in a year and a half, it has far exceeded the time it takes for a production car to go offline and go on sale.

From Jianghuai Volkswagen to Zhong Tai Ford, to Great Wall BMW, Geely Daimler and Jiangling Renault, the wave of joint ventures is gradually surging. However, these joint ventures have been criticized by the industry, from the brand point of view, the two sides of the joint venture are not equal.

From a realistic point of view, Jianghuai Volkswagen and Zhongtai Ford are more influenced and restricted by both sides of the joint venture. As far as Jianghuai Motors is concerned, the contract with Volkswagen was signed in 2016, which belongs to the rising period of development. Sales of JAC reached 643000 in 2016, up 9.4% from a year earlier, but have been falling ever since. Car sales fell to 462400 in 2018 and 234000 in the first half of 2019, down 6.78% from the same period last year. Although Jianghuai Pure Electric sold 39000 vehicles in the first half, up 95% from the same period last year, it is difficult to change the overall declining trend.

Sales of Zhongtai remained at 300000 in 2016 and 2017, leaving only 230000 in 2018 and 73900 in the first half of 2019. At the same time, Foton Motors is in a state of adjustment, with sales in China rising from 1 million last year to 750000 in 2018. In a word, the development of both sides of the joint venture has affected the development of the cooperative enterprise to a great extent.

Obviously, these multinational car companies are relatively slow in the development of new energy and generally face great pressure on points, while China's independent brands develop slowly, but they are much faster than traditional car companies in terms of new energy. You can get points by cooperating with some independent brands, which has become the most practical way for car companies to eliminate the pressure on points. Jianghuai Volkswagen, Zhong Tai Ford and other new joint venture brands all follow this logic. However, in terms of the current development, it does not seem to have achieved the desired effect, in addition to external conditions, a large part of the reason is due to the mutual restriction of enterprise shareholders, with the passage of time, the new joint venture brand is also gradually facing the problem of slow development.

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