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Earlier, foreign media reported that "the cooperation between BMW and Great Wall has been blocked, the two sides cannot reach an agreement, the negotiations have stalled, and the cooperation may be completely terminated." Great Wall Motor said today: at present, the beam automobile project is progressing smoothly, the project team has achieved many results in various fields, and shareholders of both sides are full of confidence in the project.

In July last year, BMW Group formally signed a "letter of intent" with Great Wall Motor, and in the second half of the year, it signed a cooperation agreement in Berlin, Germany, to establish a joint venture, Beam Automobile Co., Ltd., with the goal of jointly producing future-oriented pure electric vehicles.

The two sides plan to set up a Sino-foreign joint venture Light Automobile Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 1.7 billion yuan, a total investment of 5.1 billion yuan, each holding 50% of the shares, and the production of fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles not limited to the BMW MINI brand, with a planned annual production capacity of 160000.

However, the foreign media revealed that BMW engineers were not satisfied with the way Great Wall moved forward with the MINI project. BMW does not want to compromise on quality and safety, while Great Wall wants cost-effective production. The long-term plan to send BMW engineers to China to participate in research and development has also been cancelled, and even insiders at the headquarters in Munich, Germany, believe that the cooperation between the two sides will face the possibility of failure. As a result, there are "differences" between the two sides.

After the cooperation was established, Great Wall Chairman Wei Jianjun visited Germany many times, but no progress was made after several rounds of communication projects. According to another foreign media report, BMW questioned the input-output ratio and pointed out that the project suffered huge friction losses due to different cultural backgrounds.

But BMW denied this. BMW's response to the foreign media said, "the project team has been able to work well together and has made significant progress, and the team will continue to move forward."

At the beginning, the cooperation seemed to be a win-win situation. BMW's plan was to share the cost and join the joint venture into China, while Great Wall's long-term production of a single SUV model was relatively slow in the new energy sector, and there was a need to upgrade both products and technology. At the same time, the cooperation with BMW to enhance the influence of its brand is also obvious, which can help the internationalization of the Great Wall.

In today's environment where car companies are generally short of money, BMW's financial pressure has forced it to re-evaluate the input-output ratio of the project. In the first half of the year, BMW's pre-tax profit was 2.815 billion euros, down 53.1% from a year earlier, and its pre-tax profit margin was 5.8%, down from 12.6% in the same period.

However, according to the responses of Great Wall Motor and BMW, the cooperation between the two sides is still in progress, and the two sides have not disclosed much information on the specific progress.

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