|
Since February 2018 BMW, which sells a little more than 2
million cars a year, and Chinese SUV manufacturer Great Wall,
which sold around 1 million vehicles last year, have tried to
share the costs of building a low-cost electric vehicle on a
joint platform to be used by both brands, but the project ran
into regulatory hurdles.
The project, with total investment of 5.1 billion yuan ($724.4
million), will have annual capacity of 160,000 combustion engine
cars for export, Great Wall said in a Shanghai Stock Exchange
filing.
The filing said plant construction will begin next year and be
completed in 2022, but the company added that capacity for new
energy vehicles has yet to be approved by authorities.
A BMW statement said: "The initial focus of our cooperation with
the Chinese manufacturer Great Wall is the joint research and
development and the future local production of Mini electric
vehicles."
The German carmaker also said that a further announcement about
the joint venture will be made in the city of Zhangjiagang on
Nov. 29.
The two manufacturers had envisaged building low-emission
vehicles in China, but a trade dispute between China and the
United States had led BMW executives to freeze plans for the
creation of a Chinese export hub.
"We have no basis for taking a decision at the moment. Whether
this is financially viable and whether it makes sense needs to
be evaluated," BMW's Chief Executive told journalists at the
Geneva car show in March.
(Reporting by Yilei Sun in Guangzhou and Brenda Goh in Beijing
and Joern Poltz in Munich; Editing by David Goodman)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
