China EV market: Great Wall Motor opens door to tech partners, days after rejecting news on Xiaomi plan

Name: Vehicle number 10,000 rolls off the assembly line for Chinese electric carmaker XPeng
Uploaded: 2021-04-01T00:00:07.000Z
Duration: 47 s
Description: Vehicle number 10,000 rolls off the assembly line for Chinese electric carmaker XPeng

Great Wall Motor does not exclude any potential partner for any EV tie-up, investor relations manager Li Hongqiang says

Stock fell 19 per cent this year amid a major sell-off in Chinese technology and EV makers in Hong Kong and US bourses

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Daniel Ren

Published: 8:00am, 1 Apr 2021Updated: 8:00am, 1 Apr 2021

Great Wall Motor is extending an open invitation to technology firms to jointly develop next-generation cars, days after it rejected a report that it was working with smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp on an electric car project.

The country’s second-largest vehicle manufacturer by market capitalisation, which also ranks as the biggest sport-utility vehicle producer, would welcome any outside parties, it said during a media teleconference on Wednesday.

“We do not exclude any potential partner for a tie-up,” said Li Hongqiang, investor relations manager of the firm based in Baoding in northern Hebei province. “In the IoT (Internet of Things) era, Great Wall will cooperate with more companies to deepen our digitalisation drive.”

In a March 26 stock exchange filing, the carmaker denied a news report that Xiaomi was planning to use its facilities as a base to produce its electric vehicles. The smartphone maker unveiled its EV plan on March 30, without providing any details on its plant or capacity.

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Vehicle number 10,000 rolls off the assembly line for Chinese electric carmaker XPeng

The company’s shares have declined almost 19 per cent so far this year, tracking steep losses among automakers. Its market value of about US$36.5 billion is only smaller than US-listed NIO’s US$37.6 billion, according to Bloomberg data.

Great Wall Motor said it has not set any limit on investment in digital technologies amid a drastic change in the automotive industry, where electrification and digitalisation are increasingly defining the future of mobility.