Photo: Car News China
Daimler and Chinese automaker BYD are going to debut their jointly built electric car in April of 2012, according to the German automaker’s boss, Dieter Zetsche. According to Inside Line, the design of the car is "is frozen, and the first prototype will appear next April."
Unfortunately, the Chinese government’s subsidies are likely to be decreased by then, as they become more focused on longer term was of reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the nation. This spells bad news for BYD, which has already been laying off thousand of employees.
"It's short-sighted to go to China, make money and run. There needs to be give and take. BYD was so positively rated that we wanted to co-develop alternative-energy vehicles with them — it's better to be proactive. We could have done this with BAIC (Beijing Auto, another Chinese JV partner), but they have no battery technology, so it was better to do this with BYD,” said Zetsche about the Chinese market and his confidence in BYD.
"It's short-sighted to go to China, make money and run. There needs to be give and take. BYD was so positively rated that we wanted to co-develop alternative-energy vehicles with them — it's better to be proactive. We could have done this with BAIC (Beijing Auto, another Chinese JV partner), but they have no battery technology, so it was better to do this with BYD,” said Zetsche about the Chinese market and his confidence in BYD.
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