Volkswagen Diess: Push for broader cooperation in China, not the other way around

Chen Maoli, a reporter of this newspaper, reported from Beijing

"We need to push for broader cooperation in China with a more far-reaching impact, not the other way around." Recently, Diess, Chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen Group (hereinafter referred to as "Volkswagen Group"), said in a statement after participating in the dialogue of the "Global CEO Committee" that cooperation with China should be strengthened.

"Decoupling from China will do huge harm to either Germany or the EU," Des said. As a global company, we are committed to promoting the process of globalization and promoting the construction and interaction of a multilateral trading system. In the face of competition from the Chinese market, what we need to do is to keep up with the pace of innovation. ”

As a world-renowned automobile manufacturer, the reporter of China Business Daily paid attention to the fact that the Volkswagen Group just announced a fundamental change a few days ago, from a vehicle factory with multiple brands and selling cars to consumers through dealers to a vertically integrated automotive technology group.

The reporter learned that in order to accelerate the transformation to a technology group, Volkswagen Group plans to invest 89 billion euros in future technologies such as electric vehicles and digitalization in the next 5 years. Among them, the investment in electric vehicles is as high as 52 billion euros, and the investment in the development of digitalization and autonomous driving is 30 billion euros, an increase of about 10% compared with the previous plan.

It is worth mentioning that in the investment in electric vehicles, the investment in hybrid "transition technology" has been reduced by 30% to 8 billion yuan. This means that the Volkswagen Group will be more focused on the pure electric route.

In response, Dies said: "For the first time in history, we have spent more than half of our total expenditure, that is, 89 billion euros, to invest in future technology. ”

As the world's largest new energy market, China will be an important pole in the volkswagen group's transition to electrification. Dies also bluntly said that many facts are proving to the Volkswagen Group the growing importance of China.

For the Chinese market, the Volkswagen Group has made unequivocal investments in the field of electric vehicles in the past two years.

The most commendable investment of the Volkswagen Group in China in 2021 is to rapidly increase the production capacity of power batteries through acquisitions.

In December, Volkswagen (China) Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Volkswagen (China)") completed its investment in Guoxuan Hi-Tech, a power battery manufacturer. On the 15th of the same month, Guoxuan Hi-Tech issued non-public shares to Volkswagen (China), completed the registration of new shares and officially listed. After the completion of the non-public offering, the number of shares held by Volkswagen (China) in Guoxuan Hi-Tech increased to 441 million shares, and the shareholding ratio increased to 26.47%, becoming the largest shareholder of Guoxuan Hi-Tech.

In 2020, Volkswagen China invested approximately EUR 1 billion to acquire a controlling stake in its third joint venture in China, Volkswagen (Anhui) Co., Ltd.

According to industry analysts, Volkswagen Group's "big-scale" investment in the Chinese market is also rare in other markets around the world.

This year, due to the shortage of chips, Volkswagen Group's market share in China has declined slightly. China's auto market as a whole grew slightly by 4.4%. But Dies still affirmed the result.

By 2022, the development goal of China's new energy vehicle market is to double. Based on this, Diess said: "We launched the ID.3, ID.4 and ID.6 models this year and have significantly increased our sales expectations for next year. ”

Dies revealed that Volkswagen's ID. model will adopt a new sales model. "80% of our marketing investment will be spent on social media, and young Chinese audiences who love new car brands will find that Volkswagen's ID. models will interact closely with them through ID. city showrooms located in the city center and larger-scale social communications in a new sales model." This is a timely, correct and initially effective decision, and we are catching up. ”

In addition, Diess said that Volkswagen Group needs to combine the advantages of China's speed and local technology platform to maintain global competitiveness under the new pattern of NEW AUTO. "Therefore, we need the two governments to cooperate, engage in dialogue, strengthen international coordination and continuously enhance each other's economic and trade relations."

(Editor: Zhang Shuo Proofreader: Yan Jingning)