BYD Toyota set up an electric vehicle joint venture, a strong alliance or each take what they need?

2019, BYD and Toyota's intention to cooperate with the media frequently exploded, just yesterday, BYD Toyota two automobile "giant" formal marriage!

March 25, 2020, BYD and Toyota announced that the two sides established a joint venture BYD Toyota Electric Vehicle Technology Co.

Cheshiduo through enterprise search query found that the company registration date of March 25, registered capital of 345 million yuan, by Toyota Motor Corporation and BYD Company Limited each invested 172.5 million yuan to constitute the two sides of the 50% shareholding. Zhao Binggen, assistant director of BYD's Automotive Engineering Research Institute, is the legal person and general manager of the joint venture, and the directors of the joint venture include Tatsuro Ueda, chairman of Toyota China; Koji Toyoshima, chief of Toyota's electric program; and Lian Yubo, BYD's senior vice president and director of the Automotive Engineering Research Institute.

As for the scope of production and business activities, the new company will focus on the design and development of pure electric vehicles and their derivatives, as well as parts and components for pure electric vehicles and their derivatives; import and export, sales and after-sales service of parts, components and assemblies for pure electric vehicles and their derivatives.

Stronger together?

In fact, as early as July 19 last year, the two companies have announced cooperation in the development of sedans and SUVs pure electric models as well as power batteries, in accordance with the statement at the time, the two sides *** with the development of the new model is planned to be put on the Chinese market before 2025, and is expected to hang Toyota logo.

BYD is China's leading brand of new energy vehicles, and has many years of technical experience in the field of pure electric vehicles market accumulation, Toyota is the world's top brand of automobile manufacturing. BYD has a comprehensive and advanced layout of the core three electric technologies, and has achieved the first place in the global sales of new energy vehicles for four consecutive years since 2015; while Toyota has decades of experience in manufacturing HEV hybrid vehicles, and has sold more than 14 million electrified vehicles around the world, and has made remarkable achievements in the hybrid vehicle market.

The two sides seized the opportunity of the development of the pure electric market and reached a cooperation to establish a pure electric vehicle research and development company, aiming directly at the future layout of the new energy vehicle market.

The new BYD Tang EV

In fact, the two sides' understanding of the future ecology of automobile manufacturing was originally very similar, and the two sides have an open attitude towards the technology of new energy vehicles.

For example, BYD, its pure electric e-platform launched in 2018, that is, announced that it is open to the whole industry **** enjoy, other companies can cooperate with BYD, using the e-platform **** with the development of technology and products. The latest information shows that, in addition to Toyota, Daimler and other partners, BAIC, Changan, Dongfeng, Daimler and other companies have been with BYD on *** with the use of the e platform technology development of electric vehicles for cooperation or discussion.

And Toyota, at the end of 2018, sold its first-generation THS core technology to Toyota's Chinese core parts supplier, KeLiYuan, at a price of one dollar, and KeLiYuan then licensed its HTS technology to Geely.

In April last year, Toyota even announced that it would provide free access to its core electrification technology patents accumulated in the development of hybrid technology, with more than 20,000 patents open to oil-electric hybrids, plug-in hybrids, pure electrics, fuel cells, and electric motors, electronic controls, and system controls.

Each to their own?

In fact, BYD and foreign companies to join forces has long been no news,? As early as eight years ago, BYD and another auto giant Daimler invested in the establishment of Tengshi new energy vehicle brand, which produces cars positioned as a joint-venture high-end electric car brand.

Tengshi 500

BYD e6

And then the results we all know, Tengshi completely did not play out its genetic advantages, the two sides *** with the incubation of the Tengshi so many years only produced a model, its appearance of odd styling, a large number of interior set BYD was not colorful design, not only the range of general price is also high, the change of the generation of slow action. It was also slow to change. Because of this, Tengshi even needed a long-term capital injection from both sides to survive, making it a typical loser.

Even last year's Guangzhou Auto Show launch, the future will appear in the Mercedes-Benz car sales showroom Tengshi X, the bone is still a BYD Tang, whether it is the appearance or interior configuration of BYD's concepts and technologies, and even BYD's current models proud of the center rotary PAD, have been moved to the Tengshi X compartment without any change.

Tengshi is highly anticipated, but sales just aren't there, or they don't measure up to the level of attention it's getting.

Tengsten X

Why? Chestnut thinks the above reasons aren't the key either, and that Tengshi's core problems lie in three areas.

First, the domestic new-energy vehicle market at the start of Tengshi's existence was just getting started, with ambiguous policies, high manufacturing costs, and virtually no demand in the market.

Secondly, Tengshi is inextricably linked to the BYD e6 and does not carry the Mercedes-Benz logo, so the product itself has limited premium power.

Finally, Tengnuo is a product of cooperation between Daimler and BYD's subsidiary, BYD Auto Industry Co, Ltd, rather than BYD's parent company, BYD, which is cooperating with Toyota. s attention to Tengshi with some reservations.

In fact, BYD's sales of new energy vehicles have always relied heavily on the domestic market, a market that has developed over the years or relies heavily on policy support. And at a time when the policy is cooling, subsidies are about to go downhill across the board and the unbundling policy is uncertain, BYD has faced a waist-deep drop in sales of new energy models.

"New energy vehicle leader" is an honor, but also a shackle, hand over the "new energy model leader" to such as Tesla and other upstarts, is BYD absolutely not want to face.

As for Toyota, according to Toyota's plan, by 2030 sales of electrified vehicles to reach more than 5.5 million, to account for half of its total global sales of models, and hybrid (HEV) and plug-in hybrid models (PHEV) will account for 4.5 million, fuel cell (FCV) and pure electric models (EV) add up to 1 million. Toyota is currently looking at more energy are placed on the hybrid models, in pure electric models above the need to have more specialized in battery technology partners to support, single-handedly to achieve this vision pressure.

Toyota Twin Engine E+: THS system plug-in hybrid version

And China has now become the world's largest new energy market, new energy models market and especially the pure electric vehicle market, Toyota's share is still quite limited. Toyota is in urgent need of a domestic new energy leader in the technology and market support each other, in the domestic domestic market share of new energy, three electric technology almost unique BYD has become the first choice.

In BYD, this is an opportunity to rebrand and go global; in Toyota, this is an opportunity to transform its products and break through its own framework.

In fact, at the beginning of the cooperation between Daimler and BYD, the argument of "BYD embracing Daimler's thighs" was very much in the air. But after many years of accumulation of reform and evolution, at this time BYD is far from the image of BYD, this time BYD and Toyota joint venture, cooperation **** win the main theme of the network media wind direction, and even a lot of people think "BYD suffered a loss".

With the traditional Sino-foreign joint venture strategy is different, at least BYD Toyota and cooperation on the surface is not entirely straight to the money to go, their joint venture more focus on the technical level, the two sides are adhering to the principle of technological reciprocity to cooperate, not only to help Toyota to purely electric models as a breakthrough in advance of the layout of the future market, but also to help BYD in the refinement of the production of hybrid technology, and so on. The cooperation will not only help Toyota to make a breakthrough in the future market with pure electric models, but also help BYD to promote the development of the brand in terms of refined production and hybrid technology.

The joint venture between BYD and Toyota is a "strong alliance", but also "each takes what it needs", and we'll continue to monitor the progress of the BYD-Toyota joint venture project.

This article was written by the author of the car home, does not represent the views of the car home position.