Cai Che said to Li Shufu: In China, it is the second joint venture Mercedes-Benz, and the difference is that Beiqi agrees.

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According to foreign media FXStockBroker report, local time this week, Daimler CEO Ze Che in Geneva and Geely Group Chairman Li Shufu met. In the meeting, Cai Che welcomed Li Shufu as a Daimler shareholder. However, he also stated that any cooperation, research, production, and sales cooperation of Daimler in China will require the agreement of its existing joint venture partner, BAIC Group.

Although Daimler once again emphasized the importance of the partner Beijing Automotive Group to the company, but Zeche did not say anything. He said that the exchange with Li Shufu was constructive. When referring to the newly formed new factory with Beijing Automotive, Cai Che said: "We hope to reach more consensus with our joint venture partners in China."

With the continuous increase of Mercedes-Benz's market share in China, the scale of Daimler's cooperation with BAIC in China is accelerating. On February 27, 2018, Beijing Automotive Co., Ltd. announced its investment plan with Daimler at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The announcement stated that Beijing Automotive and Daimler will expand the local production scale of Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicles to meet the future demand of the Chinese market. The two parties jointly invested more than RMB 11.9 billion to build a new luxury car production base of Beijing Benz.

According to the investment plan, the new plant will make a variety of Mercedes-Benz products, including new energy electric vehicles, and will have a complete luxury car manufacturing system to further increase the overall production capacity of Beijing Benz. At present, Beijing Benz is the world's largest and most comprehensive Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicle manufacturing base. In 2017, Beijing Benz sold 423,000 units throughout the year, an increase of 33.3% year-on-year, and production and sales volume increased by more than double digits for eight consecutive years; operating revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan, an increase of 35.9% year-on-year.

However, BAIC Group is a state-owned enterprise after all. Any business behavior of the company that involves the change of ownership of assets needs to be submitted to the competent authority for approval. In fact, as early as 2013, Xu Heyi, chairman of Beijing Automotive Industry Corporation, once stated that the company is seeking cross-shareholdings with Mercedes-Benz but has been unable to do so. At that time, Daimler's attitude toward Beiqi was the same as that of Geely, requiring the latter to purchase through the secondary market. However, until 2015, both parties were still discussing the matter, but no agreement was reached.

Now, "barbarian" Li Shufu has become a major shareholder of Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, with less than US$9 billion in funds. He wonders what impact it will have on Beiqi, which has been "planned for a long time." But for Daimler, the ability to seek a second joint venture in China is clearly a smart move outweighing the disadvantages. After all, Mercedes-Benz sales in China are increasing year by year, and new cars are not sold at all. For so many models in the company's product line, it is not difficult to separate out several models that were handed over to Geely Mercedes (the tentative name of the new joint venture).

Although there are still many uncertainties, Li Shufu's "eye medicine" for Xu Heyi is indeed "just right". “This move by Geely’s chairman may stimulate Beiqi’s further efforts to acquire Daimler’s shares.” Cai Che finally said, but he also “backed up” the phrase “Of course, these are my assumptions and Speculation."